Letters  from  The  Raven 


Letters  from  The  Raven 

BEING  THE  CORRESPONDENCE  OF 

Lafcadio  Hearn  with 
Henry  Watkin 

WITH  INTRODUCTION  AND 

CRITICAL  COMMENT  BY  THE  EDITOR 

MILTON  BRONNER 


NEW  YORK 

Brentano's 

1907 


COPYRIGHT,    1907,  BY  BRENTANO  S 


D.   B.   UPDIKE,   THE   MERRYMOUNT  PRESS,   BOSTON 


To 

My  Sweethearts  Three 
Marian,  May 

and 
Motherkin 


242353 


Contents 

INTRODUCTION  9 

LETTERS   FROM  THE   RAVEN  21 

LETTERS  TO  A  LADY  113 

LETTERS  OF  OZIAS   MIDWINTER  155 


Introduction 


Introduction 

IT  is  felt  that  no  apology  is  necessary  for  offer 
ing  to  the  interested  public,  even  though  it  be 
a  limited  one,  the  letters  and  extracts  from  let 
ters  which  appear  in  this  little  volume.  In  a  day 
when  the  letters  of  Aubrey  Beardsley — who  was 
a  draughtsman  rather  than  a  writer — are  gravely 
offered  to  possible  readers  by  a  great  publishing 
house,  it  is  surely  allowable  to  present  for  the  first 
time  epistles  of  a  really  great  author.  No  excuse 
was  offered  for  printing  such  things  as :  "  Thank 
you  so  much.  It  was  very  good  of  you  to  call." 
If  this  tells  us  anything  concerning  the  unfortu 
nate  young  master  of  white  and  black,  I  am  un 
able  to  discern  it.  I  feel  quite  sure  that  no  one  can 
make  the  same  objection  to  the  correspondence 
herewith  given.  It  tells  us  many  things  concern 
ing  Hearn's  life  and  moods  and  aspirations  that 
otherwise  would  have  been  unknown  to  us.  He 
wrote  to  Mr.  Henry  Watkin  as  to  his  dearest 
friend.  In  his  letters,  we  get  what  we  do  not  find 
elsewhere.  We  have  here  facts  without  which  his 
future  biographer  would  be  at  a  loss. 

If  there  be  any  repetitions  in  the  sections  which 
follow,  the  indulgence  of  the  reader  is  craved.  Such 


IO 


Introduction 


as  they  are,  they  were  written  at  widely  separated 
intervals  in  the  hope  that  material  might  be  fi 
nally  gathered  for  a  "Life and  Letters  of  Hearn." 
This  hope  has  so  far  been  frustrated,  but  it  is  felt 
that  much  is  here  offered  that  will  lead  to  a  better 
understanding  and  appreciation  of  this  famous 
writer.  The  endeavor  of  the  editor  has  been  so 
far  as  possible  to  let  Hearn  tell  his  own  story, 
giving  only  enough  comment  to  make  clear  what 
Hearn  himself  had  to  say. 

In  writing  of  their  beloved  R.  L.  S.,  enthu 
siasts  tell  us  Stevenson  is  endeared  to  mankind 
not  only  because  of  his  writings,  but  also  because 
of  his  dauntless  cheerfulness  in  the  face  of  in 
curable  disease.  Hearn,  in  another  field,  was 
equally  charming  in  his  work  and,  in  the  face  of 
another  danger,  equally  dauntless.  From  the  first 
he  was  confronted  by  the  possible  fate  of  the 
sightless.  At  best  he  had  but  a  pearly  vision  of 
the  world.  The  mere  labor  of  writing  was  a  physi 
cal  task  with  him,  demanding  hours  for  the  com 
position  of  a  single  letter.  Yet  he  accomplished 
almost  two  score  volumes,  none  of  which  is 
carelessly  written.  Seeing  as  through  a  ghostly 
vapor,  in  his  books  he  revelled  in  color  as  few 
writers  of  our  day  have  been  able  to  do.  How  he 


Introduction  n 

managed  to  see,  or  rather  to  comprehend,  all  the 
things  he  so  vividly  described,  was  one  of  his 
secrets. 

^The  best  work  of  his  life  was  commenced  at 
the  age  of  forty,  when  he  arrived  in  Japan.  He 
had  many  qualifications  for  his  chosen  field. 
During  the  long,  lazy  two  years  in  Martinique  he 
had  literally  soaked  his  mind,  as  it  were,  with 
Oriental  philosophy.  When  he  came  to  Japan  he 
was  weary  of  wandering,  and  the  courtesy,  gentle 
ness  and  kindliness  of  the  natives  soon  convinced 
him  that  they  were  the  best  people  in  the  world 
among  whom  to  live.  A  small  man  physically, 
he  felt  at  home  in  a  nation  of  small  men.  It 
pleased  his  shy,  sensitive  nature  to  think  that  he 
was  often  mistaken  for  a  Japanese. 

To  his  studies  and  his  work  he  brought  a  pro 
digious  curiosity,  a  perfect  sympathy,  and  an  ad 
mirable  style.  He  had  an  eye  that  observed  every 
thing  in  this  delightful  Nippon,  from  the  manner 
in  which  the  women  threaded  their  needles  to  the 
effect  of  Shinto  and  Buddhism  upon  the  national 
character,  religion,  art,  and  literature.  Japanese 
folk-lore,  Japanese  street  songs  and  sayings,  the 
home  life  of  the  people, —  everything  appealed  to 
him,  and  the  farther  removed  from  modern  days 


12 


Introduction 


and  from  Christianity,  the  stronger  the  appeal. 

Zangwill  has  acutely  said,  in  speaking  of  Loti's 
famous  story  of  Japan,  "Instead  of  looking  for 
the  soul  of  a  people,  Pierre  Loti  was  simply  look 
ing  for  a  woman." 

Hearn  did  not  fail  to  tell  us  of  many  women, 
but  his  most  particular  search  was  for  just  that 
soul  of  a  people  which  Loti  ignored;  and  in  the 
hunt  for  that  soul,  he  became  more  and  more 
impressed  by  that  Buddhism  which  enabled  him 
the  better  to  comprehend  the  people.  His  whole 
religious  life  had  been  a  wandering  away  from  the 
Christianity  to  which  he  was  born  and  a  rinding 
of  a  faith  compounded  of  Buddhism  modified 
by  paganism,  and  a  leaven  of  the  scientific  be 
liefs  of  agnostics  such  as  Spencer  and  Huxley, 
whom  he  never  wearied  of  reading  and  quoting. 
In  all  his  writings  this  tendency  is  displayed.  In 
one  of  the  letters  we  see  him  an  avowed  agnostic, 
or  perhaps  "pantheist"  would  be  the  better 
word.  In  his  little-known  story  of  1889,  pub 
lished  in  Lippincotfsy  with  the  Buddhist  title  of 
"  Karma,"  there  is  a  curious  tribute  to  a  fair,  pure 
woman.  It  shows  the  hold  the  theory  of  heredity 
and  evolution  and  the  belief  in  reincarnation  al 
ready  had  upon  him: 


Introduction  13 

"In  her  beauty  is  the  resurrection  of  the  fair 
est  past;  —  in  her  youth,  the  perfection  of  the 
present; — in  her  girl  dreams,  the  promise  of  the 
To-Be. ...  A  million  lives  have  been  consumed 
that  hers  should  be  made  admirable;  countless 
minds  have  planned  and  toiled  and  agonized  that 
thought  might  reach  a  higher  and  purer  power  in 
her  delicate  brain;  —  countless  hearts  have  been 
burned  out  by  suffering  that  hers  might  pulse  for 
joy ; — innumerable  eyes  have  lost  their  light  that 
hers  might  be  filled  with  witchery ; — innumerable 
lips  have  prayed  that  hers  might  be  kissed." 

On  his  first  day  in  the  Orient  he  visited  a  tem 
ple  and  made  an. offering,  recording  the  follow 
ing  conversation,  which  gives  an  admirable  in 
sight  into  his  religious  beliefs:* 

"'Are  you  a  Christian?' 

"And  I  answered  truthfully/ No.' 

"cAre  you  a  Buddhist?' 

"'Not  exadly.' 

"'Why  do  you  make  offerings  if  you  do  not 
believe  in  Buddha?' 

"CI  revere  the  beauty  of  his  teaching,  and  the 
faith  of  those  who  follow  it.'" 

*This  and  several  other  extracts  are  from  that  delightful 
book,  Glimpses  of  Unfamiliar  J ap an,  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co. 


14  Introduction 

From  this  by  degrees  he  reached  to  a  pure  Bud 
dhism,  tempered,  however,  by  a  strange,  romantic 
half  belief,  half  love  for  the  old  pagan  gods,  feel 
ing  himself  at  heart  a  pagan,  too: 

"  For  these  quaint  Gods  of  Roads  and  Gods 
of  Earth  are  really  livingstill,  though  so  worn  and 
mossed  and  feebly  worshipped.  In  this  brief  mo 
ment,  at  least,  I  am  really  in  the  Elder  World, 
—  perhaps  just  at  that  epoch  of  it  when  the  pri 
mal  faith  is  growing  a  little  old-fashioned,  crum 
bling  slowly  before  the  corrosive  influence  of  a 
new  philosophy ;  and  I  know  myself  a  pagan  still, 
loving  these  simple  old  gods,  these  gods  of  a  peo 
ple's  childhood.  And  they  need  some  love,  these 
naif,  innocent,  ugly  gods.  The  beautiful  divini 
ties  will  live  forever  by  that  sweetness  of  woman 
hood  idealized  in  the  Buddhist  art  of  them :  eter 
nal  are  Kwannon  and  Benten;  they  need  no  help 
ofman;theywill  compel  reverence  when  the  great 
temples  shall  all  have  become  voiceless  andpriest- 
less  as  this  shrine  of  Koshin  is.  But  these  kind, 
queer,  artless,  mouldering  gods,  who  have  given 
ease  to  so  many  troubled  minds,  who  have  glad 
dened  so  many  simple  hearts,  who  have  heard 
so  many  innocent  prayers,  —  how  gladly  would 
I  prolong  their  beneficent  lives  in  spite  of  the  so- 


Introduction  15 

called  'laws  of  progress*  and  the  irrefutable  phi 
losophy  of  evolution." 

It  is  the  combination  of  the  various  beliefs 
here  shadowed  that  explains  the  unique  note  he 
brought  into  our  literature.  The  man  who  was  at 
once  a  follower  of  Spencer  and  of  Buddha,  with  a 
large  sympathy  for  the  old  folk-religion,  brought 
forth  an  embodied  thought  entirely  new  to  the 
world.  Nothing  like  it  had  ever  been  produced 
before.  Its  like  may  never  be  produced  again.  He 
endeavored  to  reconcile  the  evolutional  theory 
of  inherited  tendencies  with  the  Buddhist  be 
lief  in  reincarnation, —  one  lengthening  chain  of 
lives,  —  and  with  the  worship  of  the  dead  as  seen 
in  pure  Shinto,  for  "is  not  every  action  indeed 
the  work  of  the  Dead  who  dwell  within  us?" 

It  was  this  queer  combination  that  gave  a 
strange  charm,  a  moving  magic,  to  various  pas 
sages  in  his  books.  For  the  rest,  his  work  and 
method  of  labor,  may  best  be  described  in  his 
own  words  when  speaking  of  Japanese  artists. 
He  writes: 

"The  foreign  artist  will  give  you  realistic  re 
flections  of  what  he  sees;  but  he  will  give  you  no 
thing  more.  The  Japanese  artist  gives  you  that 
which  he  feels,  —  the  mood  of  a  season,  the  pre- 


16  Introduction 

cise  sensation  of  an  hour  and  place;  his  work  is 
qualified  by  a  power  ofsuggestiveness  rarely  found 
in  the  art  of  the  West.  The  Occidental  painter 
renders  minute  detail;  he  satisfies  the  imagination 
he  evokes.  But  his  Oriental  brother  either  sup 
presses  or  idealizes  detail, — steeps  his  distances 
in  mist,  bands  his  landscapes  with  cloud,  makes 
of  his  experience  a  memory  in  which  only  the 
strange  and  the  beautiful  survive,  with  their  sensa 
tions.  He  surpasses  imagination,  excites  it,  leaves 
it  hungry  with  the  hunger  of  charm  perceived  in 
glimpses  only.  Nevertheless  in  such  glimpses  he 
is  able  to  convey  the  feeling  of  a  time,  the  char 
acter  of  a  place,  after  a  fashion  that  seems  magi 
cal.  He  is  a  painter  of  recollections  and  sensa 
tions  rather  than  of  clear-cut  realities;  and  in  this 
lies  the  secret  of  his  amazing  power." 

It  has  often  been  asked,  "These  books  are 
beautiful  as  prose,  but  do  they  give  us  Japan?" 
Some  have  said  he  saw  Japan  with  the  eyes  of  a 
lover  and  was  thus  deceived.  Captain  F.  Brink- 
ley,  an  authority  on  Oriental  matters  and  for  years 
editor  of  the  most  important  English  paper  in 
the  Orient,  has  expressed,  to  the  present  writer, 
his  skepticism  concerning  the  entire  verity  of 
some  of  Hearn's  pictures.  On  the  other  hand, 


Introduction  17 

here  is  what  two  Japanese  writers  say:  Mr.  Yone 
Noguchi,  himself  a  poet  of  no  mean  abilities, 
writes  of  H earn:"  I  like  to  vindicate  Hearn  from 
the  criticism  that  his  writing  is  about  one  third 
Japanese  and  two  thirds  Hearn.  Fortunately  his 
two  thirds  Hearn  is  also  Japanese." 

This  is  heartily  seconded  by  Mr.  Adachi  Kin- 
nosuke:  "So  truly  did  he  write  of  us  and  of  our 
land,  that  the  West,  which  is  always  delighted  to 
fall  in  love  with  counterfeits  in  preference  to  the 
genuine,  did  not  believe  him ;  made  merry  at  his 
expense,  told  him  that  he  was  a  dreamer,  that 
his  accounts  were  too  rose-colored.  We  of  the 
soil  only  marvelled.  Of  him  we  have  said  that  he 
is  more  of  Nippon  than  ourselves/* 

No  fitter  close  to  this  introduction  may  be 
given  than  Noguchi's  prose  elegy  sent  to  Ame 
rica  from  Tokio  several  days  after  Hearn's  in 
terment: 

"Truly  he  was  a  delicate,  easily  broken  Japa 
nese  vase,  old  as  the  world,  beautiful  as  a  cherry 
blossom.  Alas!  that  wonderful  vase  was  broken. 
He  is  no  more  with  us.  Surely  we  could  better 
lose  two  or  three  battle-ships  at  Port  Arthur  than 
Lafcadio  Hearn.'' 


Letters  from  The  Raven 


Letters  from  The  Raven 

TAKE  up  any  book  written  by  Lafcadio 
Hearn  concerning  Japan,  and  you  will  find 
the  most  delicate  interpretation  of  the  life  of  the 
people,  their  religion,  their  folk-songs,  their  cus 
toms,  expressed  in  English  that  it  is  a  delight 
to  read.  Upon  further  examination  you  will  no 
tice  the  calm,  the  serenity,  the  self-poise  of  the 
writer.  It  is  as  though,  miraculously  finding  utter 
ance,  he  were  one  of  those  stone  Buddhas  erected 
along  the  Japanese  highways.  He  seems  to  have 
every  attribute  of  a  great  writer  save  humor.  There 
is  hardly  a  smile  in  any  of  his  books  on  Japan. 
One  would  say  that  the  author  was  a  man  who 
never  knew  what  gaiety  was.  One  would  judge 
that  his  life  had  lain  in  quiet  places  always,  with 
out  any  singular  sorrow  or  suffering,  without  any 
struggle  for  existence.  Judged  by  what  Hearn 
told  the  world  at  large,  the  impression  would  be 
a  correct  one. 

He  was  shy  by  nature.  He  did  not  take  the 
world  into  his  confidence.  Hewas  not  one  to  harp 
on  his  own  troubles  and  ask  the  world  to  sym 
pathize  with  him.  The  world  had  dealt  him  some 
very  hard  blows, —  blows  which  hurt  sorely, — 


22 


Letters  from  The  Raven 


and  so,  while  he  gave  the  public  his  books,  he  kept 
himself  to  himself.  He  transferred  the  aroma  of 
Japan  to  his  writings.  He  did  not  sell  the  reader 
snap-shots  of  his  own  personality.  To  one  man 
only  perhaps  in  the  whole  world  did  the  little 
Greek-Irishman  reveal  his  inner  thoughts,  and  he 
was  one  who  thirty-eight  years  ago  opened  his  heart 
and  his  home  to  the  travel-stained,  poverty-bur 
dened  lad  of  nineteen,  who  had  run  away  from  a 
monastery  in  Wales  and  who  still  had  part  of  his 
monk's  garb  for  clothing  when  he  reached  America. 

Hearn  never  discussed  his  family  affairs  very 
extensively,  but  made  it  clear  that  his  father  was  a 
surgeon  in  the  crack  Seventy-sixth  Regiment  of 
British  Infantry,  and  his  mother  a  Greek  woman 
of  Cherigo  in  the  Ionian  Islands.  The  social  cir 
cle  to  which  his  father  belonged  frowned  on  the 
mesalliance,  and  when  the  wife  and  children  arrived 
in  England,  after  the  father's  death,  the  aristo 
cratic  relatives  soon  made  the  strangers  feel  that 
they  were  anything  but  welcome. 

The  young  Lafcadio  was  chosen  for  the  priest 
hood,  and  after  receiving  his  education  partly  in 
France  and  partly  in  England,  he  was  sent  to  a 
monastery  in  Wales.  As  he  related  afterwards,  he 
was  in  bad  odor  there  from  the  first.  Even  as  a 


Letters  from  The  Raven       23 

boy  he  had  the  skeptical  notions  about  things  re 
ligious  that  were  to  abide  with  him  for  long  years 
after  and  change  him  to  an  ardent  materialist  un 
til  he  fell  under  the  influence  of  Buddhism.  One 
day,  after  a  dispute  with  the  priests,  and  in  disgust 
with  the  course  in  life  that  had  been  mapped  out 
for  him,  the  boy  took  what  money  he  could  get 
and  made  off  to  America.  After  sundry  adven 
tures,  concerning  which  he  was  always  silent,  he 
arrived  in  Cincinnati  in  1 869,  hungry,  tired,  un 
kempt, —  a  boy  without  a  trade,  without  friends, 
without  money.  In  some  way  he  made  the  ac 
quaintance  of  a  Scotch  printer,  and  this  man  in 
turn  introduced  him  to  Henry  Watkin,  an  Eng 
lishman,  largely  self-educated,  of  broad  culture 
and  wide  reading,  of  singular  liberality  of  views, 
and  a  lover  of  his  kind.  Watkin  at  this  time  ran 
a  printing  shop. 

Left  alone  with  the  lad,  who  had  come  across 
the  seas  to  be  as  far  away  as  possible  from  his  fa 
ther's  people,  the  man  of  forty-five  surveyed  the 
boy  of  nineteen  and  said,"  Well,  my  young  man, 
how  do  you  expect  to  earn  a  living?" 

"I  don't  know." 

"Have  you  any  trade?" 

"No,  sir." 


24       Letters  from  The  Raven 

"Can  you  do  anything  at  all?" 

"Yes,  sir;  I  might  write,"  was  the  eager  reply. 

"Umph!"  said  Watkin;  "better  learn  some 
bread-winning  trade  and  put  off  writing  until 
later." 

After  this  Hearn  was  installed  as  errand  boy 
and  helper.  He  was  not  goodly  to  look  upon.  His 
body  was  unusually  puny  and  under-sized.  The 
softness  of  his  tread  had  something  feline  and 
feminine  in  it.  His  head,  covered  with  long  black 
hair,  was  full  and  intellectual,  save  for  two  de- 
feds,  a  weak  chin  and  an  eye  of  the  variety  known 
as"pearl,"  —  large  and  white  andbulbous,  so  that 
it  repelled  people  upon  a  first  acquaintance. 

Hearn  felt  deeply  the  effect  his  shyness,  his 
puny  body,  and  his  unsightly  eye  had  upon  peo 
ple,  and  this  feeling  served  to  make  him  even 
more  diffident  and  more  melancholy  than  he  was 
by  nature.  However,  as  with  many  melancholy- 
natured  souls,  he  had  an  element  of  fun  in  him, 
which  came  out  afterwards  upon  his  longer  ac 
quaintance  with  the  first  man  who  had  given  him 
a  helping  hand. 

Hearn  swept  the  floor  of  the  printing  shop 
and  tried  to  learn  the  printer's  craft,  but  failed, 
He  slept  in  a  little  room  back  of  the  shop  and 


Letters  from  The  Raven        25 

ate  his  meals  in  the  place  with  Mr.  Watkin.  He 
availed  himself  of  his  benefactor's  library,  and  read 
Poe  and  volumes  on  free  thought,  delighted  to 
find  a  kindred  spirit  in  the  older  man.  Together 
they  often  crossed  the  Ohio  River  into  Kentucky 
to  hear  lectures  on  spiritualism  and  laugh  about 
them. Theircompanionship was  not  brokenwhen 
Mr.  Watkin  secured  for  the  boy  a  position  with 
a  Captain  Barney,  who  edited  and  published  a 
commercial  paper,  for  which  Hearn  solicited  ad 
vertisements  and  to  which  he  began  also  to  con 
tribute  articles.  One  of  these — a  singular  com 
position  for  such  a  paper — was  a  proposal  to 
cross  the  Atlantic  in  a  balloon  anchored  to  a 
floating  buoy.  It  was  later  in  the  year  that  he 
secured  a  position  as  a  reporter  on  the  Enquirer, 
through  some  "feature"  articles  he  shyly  depos 
ited  upon  the  editor's  desk,  making  his  escape 
before  the  great  man  had  caught  him  in  the  act. 
It  was  not  long  before  the  latent  talent  in  the 
youth  began  to  make  itself  manifest.  He  was  not 
a  rapid  writer.  On  the  contrary,  he  was  exceed 
ingly  slow,  but  his  produ 61  was  written  in  English 
that  no  reporter  then  working  in  Cincinnati  ap 
proached.  His  fellow  reporters  soon  became  jeal 
ous  of  him.  They  were,  moreover,  repelled  by  his 


26        Letters  from  The  Raven 

personal  appearance  and  chilled  by  his  steady  re 
fusal  to  see  the  fun  of  getting  drunk.  Finding  lack 
of  congeniality  among  the  young  men  of  his  own 
age  and  occupation,  among  whom  he  was  to  work 
for  seven  more  years,  his  friendship  with  Mr. 
Watkin  became  all  the  stronger,  so  that  he  came 
to  look  upon  the  latter  as  the  one  person  in  Cin 
cinnati  upon  whom  he  could  count  for  unselfish 
companionship  and  sincere  advice.  Hearn's  Cin 
cinnati  experiences  ended  with  his  service  on  the 
Enquirer.  Before  that  he  had  been  proofreader 
to  a  publishing  house  and  secretary  to  Cincin 
nati's  public  librarian.  He  was  also  for  a  time  on 
the  staff  of  the  Commercial.  It  was  while  on  the 
Enquirer  that  he  accomplished  several  journa 
listic  feats  that  are  still  referred  to  in  gatherings 
of  oldtime  newspaper  men  of  Cincinnati.  One 
was  a  grisly  description  of  the  charred  body  of 
a  murdered  man,  the  screed  being  evidently  in 
spired  by  recollections  of  Poe.  The  other  was  an 
article  describing  Cincinnati  as  seen  from  the  top 
of  a  high  church  steeple,  the  joke  of  it  being  that 
Hearn,  by  reason  of  his  defective  vision,  could 
see  nothing  even  after  he  had  made  his  perilous 
climb.  It  was  in  the  last  days  of  his  stay  in  Cin 
cinnati  that  he,  with  H.  F.  Farny,  the  painter, 


Letters  from  The  Raven       27 

issued  a  short-lived  weekly  known  as  Giglampz.  • 
Farny,  not  yet  famous  as  an  Indian  painter,  con 
tributed  the  drawings,  and  Hearn  the  bulk  of 
the  letter  press  for  the  journal,  which  modestly 
announced  that  it  was  going  to  eclipse  Punch 
and  all  the  other  famous  comic  weeklies.  Hearn, 
always  sensitive,  practically  withdrew  from  the 
magazine  when  Farny  took  the  very  excusable 
liberty  of  changing  the  title  of  one  of  the  essays 
of  the  former.  Farny  thought  the  title  offen 
sive  to  people  of  good  taste,  and  said  so.  Hearn 
apparently  acquiesced,  but  brooded  over  the 
"slight,"  and  never  again  contributed  to  the 
weekly.  Shortly  afterwards  it  died.  It  is  doubt 
ful  whether  there  are  any  copies  in  existence. 
Many  Cincinnati  collectors  have  made  rounds 
of  the  second-hand  book-shops  in  a  vain  search 
for  stray  numbers. 

Early  in  their  acquaintance  Watkin  and 
Hearn  called  each  other  by  endearing  names 
which  were  adhered  to  throughout  the  long  years 
of  their  correspondence.  Mr.  Watkin,  with  his 
leonine  head,  was  familiarly  addressed  as  "  Old 
Man"  or  "Dad;"  while  the  boy,  by  virtue  of  his 
dark  hair  and  coloring,  the  gloomy  cast  of  his 
thoughts,  and  his  deep  love  for  Poe,  was  known 


28        Letters  from  The  Raven 

as  "The  Raven,"  a  name  which  caught  his  fancy. 
Indeed,  a  simple  little  drawing  of  the  bird  stood 
for  many  years  in  place  of  a  signature  to  anything 
he  chanced  to  write  to  Mr.  Watkin.  In  spite  of 
their  varying  lines  of  work,  the  two  were  often 
together.  When  "The  Raven"  was  prowling  the 
city  for  news,  he  was  often  accompanied  by  his 
"  Dad."  Not  infrequently,  when  the  younger  man 
had  no  especial  task,  he  would  come  to  Mr.  Wat- 
kin's  office  and  read  some  books  there.  One  of 
these,  whose  title  and  author  Mr.  Watkin  has 
forgotten,  fascinated  at  the  same  time  that  it  re 
pelled  Hearn  by  its  grim  and  ghastly  stories  of 
battle,  murder, and  sudden  death.  One  night  Mr. 
Watkin  left  him  reading  in  the  office.  When  he 
opened  the  place  the  next  morning  he  found  this 
note  from  Hearn: 

"10  P.M.  These  stories  are  positively  so  hor 
rible  that  even  a  materialist  feels  rather  unplea 
santly  situated  when  left  alone  with  the  thoughts 
conjured  up  by  this  dreamer  of  fantastic  dreams. 
The  brain-chambers  of  fancy  become  thronged 
with  goblins.  I  think  I  shall  go  home." 

For  signature  there  was  appended  a  very  black 
and  a  very  thoughtful-looking  raven. 

It  was  also  in  these  days  that  Hearn  indulged 


Letters  from  The  Raven       29 

in  his  little  pleasantries  with  Mr.  Watkin.  Hardly 
a  day  passed  without  a  visit  to  the  printing  office. 
When  he  did  not  find  his  friend,  he  usually  left 
a  card  for  him,  on  which  was  some  little  drawing, 


A  PENCIL  SKETCH   BY   HEARN   LEFT  AT  MR.   WATKIN  S 
SHOP  AT  THE  BEGINNING  OF  THEIR  FRIENDSHIP 

Hearn  having  quite  a  talent  in  this  direction, — 
a  talent  that  he  never  afterward  developed.  Of 
course  some  of  the  cards  were  just  as  nonsen 
sical  as  the  nonsense  verses  friends  often  write 
to  each  other.  They  are  merely  quoted  to  show 
Hearn's  fund  of  animal  spirits  at  the  time. 

Mr.  Watkin  one  day  left  a  card  forpossible  cus 
tomers  :  "  Gone  to  supper.  H.  W."  Hearn  passed 
by  and  wrote  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  card: 
"Gone  to  get  my  sable  plumage  plucked."  The 
inevitable  raven  followed  as  signature.  It  was 


30       Letters  from  The  Raven 

Hearn's  way  of  saying  he  had  come  to  see  Mr. 
Watkin  and  had  then  gone  to  a  barber  shop  to 
have  his  hair  cut.  Once  he  omitted  the  raven  and 
signed  his  note,  "Kaw." 


V 


VAA"VV 


FACSIMILE  OF  ONE  OF  THE  CARDS  HEARN  LEFT  AT 
MR.  WATKIN'S  SHOP 

On  another  occasion  when  Mr.  Watkin  came 
to  the  office  he  found  a  note  informing  him  that 
he  was  "a  flabbergasted  ichthyosaurus  and  an 
antediluvian  alligator"  for  not  being  on  hand. 

The  influence  of  Poe  was  strong  upon  him 
even  in  this  nonsense.  Hearn  waited  for  his  friend 
one  night  until  a  late  hour.  The  shop  was  quite 
lonely,  as  it  was  the  only  open  one  in  a  big  build 
ing  on  a  more  or  less  deserted  street.  The  quiet 
became  oppressive,  and  the  little  man  left  because 
"these  chambers  are  cursed  with  the  Curse  of 
Silence.  And  the  night,  which  is  the  Shadow  of 
God,  waneth." 


Letters  from  The  Raven       31 

Mr.  Watkin  had  a  dog.  Hearn  did  not  like 
the  animal,  and  it  seemed  to  reciprocate  the  feel 
ing.  One  of  Hearn's  notes  was  largely  devoted 
to  the  little  beast.  When  he  so  chose  Hearn  could 
make  a  fairly  good  drawing.  This  particular  note 
was  adorned  with  rude  pictures  of  an  animal  sup 
posed  to  be  a  dog.  The  teeth  were  made  the  most 
prominent  feature.  The  piclures  were  purposely 
made  in  a  childish  style,  and  used  for  the  word 
"dog." 

"DEAR  NASTY  CROSS  OLD  MAN! 

"I  tried  to  find  you  last  night. 

"You  were  not  in  apparently. 

"  I  shook  the  door  long  and  violently,  and  lis 
tened. 

"  I  did  not  hear  the  [dog]  bark. 

"Perhaps  you  were  not  aware  that  the  night 
you  got  so  infernally  mad  I  slipped  a  cooked  beef 
steak  strongly  seasoned  with  Strychnine  under 
the  door. 

"I  was  glad  that  the  [dog]  did  not  bark. 

"I  suspect  the  [dog]  will  not  bark  ANY  MORE! 

"  I  think  the  [dog]  must  have  gone  to  that 
Bourne  from  which  NO  TRAVELLER  RETURNETH. 

"I  hope  the  [dog]  is  DEAD." 


32       Letters  from  The  Raven 

The  note  is  signed  with  the  usual  drawing  of 
a  raven.  On  still  another  occasion  he  wrote  the 
following  farrago: 

"I  came  to  see  you — to  thank  you  —  to  re 
monstrate  with  you — to  demonstrate  matters  syl- 
logistically  and  phlebotomically.  GONE!  ! !  Then 
I  departed,  wandering  among  the  tombs  of  Me 
mory,  where  the  Ghouls  of  the  Present  gnaw  the 
black  bones  of  the  Past.  Then  I  returned  and 
crept  to  the  door  and  listened  to  see  if  I  could 
hear  the  beating  of  your  hideous  heart." 

These  little  notes  are  not  presented  here  for 
any  intrinsic  merit;  they  are  given  simply  to 
show  how  different  was  the  real  Hearn  from  the 
shy,  silent,  uncommunicative,  grave,  little  re 
porter. 

His  notes  were  but  precursors  to  the  letters  in 
which  he  was  most  truly  to  reveal  himself.  Unlike 
the  epistles  of  great  writers  that  so  frequently 
find  theirway  into  print,  Hearn's  letters  were  not 
written  with  an  eye  to  publication.  They  were 
written  solely  for  the  interest  of  their  recipient. 
They  were  in  the  highest  form  of  the  true  letter, 
—  written  talks  with  the  favorite  friend,  couched 
usually  in  the  best  language  the  writer  knew  how 
to  employ.  They  tell  their  own  story,  —  the  only 


Letters  from  The  Raven       33 

story  of  Hearn's  life, — a  story  often  of  hopeless 
search  for  bread-winning  work;  of  bitter  glooms 
and  hysterical  pleasures;  of  deep  enjoyment  of 
Louisiana  autumns  and  West  Indian  and  Japa 
nese  scenes;  of  savage  hatred  of  Cincinnati  and 
New  Orleans,  the  two  American  cities  in  which 
he  had  worked  as  a  newspaper  man  and  in  which 
he  had  been  made  to  realize  that  he  had  many 
enemies  and  but  few  friends.  Everything  is  told 
in  these  letters  to  Mr.  Watkin,  to  whom  he 
poured  out  his  thoughts  and  feelings  without  re 
serve.  Hearn's  first  step  towards  bettering  him 
self  followed  when  he  became  weary  of  the 
drudgery  of  work  on  the  Cincinnati  papers,  and 
decided,  after  much  discussion  with  Mr.  Watkin, 
to  resign  his  position  and  go  South,  the  Crescent 
City  being  his  objective  point. 

It  was  in  October,  1877,  that  Hearn  set  out 
from  Cincinnati  on  his  way  to  New  Orleans, 
going  by  rail  to  Memphis,  whence  he  took  the 
steamboat  Thompson  Dean  down  the  Mississippi 
River  to  his  destination.  While  in  Memphis,  im 
patiently  waiting  for  his  steamer  to  arrive,  and 
afterwards  in  New  Orleans,  Hearn  kept  himself 
in  touch  with  his  friend  in  Cincinnati  by  means 
of  a  series  of  messages  hastily  scribbled  on  postal 


34       Letters  from  The  Raven 

cards.  Many  of  these  reflected  the  animal  spirits 
of  the  young  man  of  twenty-seven,  who  had  still 
preserved  a  goodly  quantity  of  his  boyishness, 
though  he  felt,  as  he  said,  as  old  as  the  moon. 
But  not  all  of  the  little  messages  were  gay.  The 
tendency  to  despondency  and  morbidity,  which 
had  partially  led  Mr.  Watkin  to  dub  Hearn 
"The  Raven,"  now  showed  itself.  The  first  of 
these  cards,  which  Mr.  Watkin  has  preserved, 
was  sent  from  Memphis  on  October  28, 1 877.  It 
bears  two  drawings  of  a  raven.  In  one  the  eyes 
are  very  thoughtful.  The  raven  is  scratching  its 
head  with  its  claws,  and  below  is  the  legend,  "In 
a  dilemma  at  Memphis."  The  other  raven  is 
merely  labelled,"  Remorseful. "The  next  was  sent 
on  October  29.  Hearn  had  begun  to  worry.  He 
wrote: 

"DEAR  O.  M.  [Old  Man]:  Did  not  stop  at 
Louisville.  Could  n't  find  out  anything  about 
train.  Am  stuck  at  Memphis  for  a  week  waiting 
for  a  boat.  Getting  d — d  poor.  New  Orleans  far 
off.  Five  hundred  miles  to  Vicksburg.  Board  two 
dollars  per  day.  Trouble  and  confusion.  Flabber 
gasted.  Mixed  up.  Knocked  into  a  cocked  hat." 

The  raven,  used  as  the  signature,  wears  a  trou 


Letters  from  The  Raven        35 

bled  countenance.  On  the  same  day,  perhaps  in 
the  evening,  Hearn  sent  still  another  card: 

"  DEAR  O.  M. :  Have  succeeded  with  enormous 
difficulty  in  securing  accommodations  at  one  dol 
lar  per  diem,  including  a  bed  in  a  haunted  room. 
Very  blue.  Here  is  the  mosquito  of  these  parts, 
natural  size.  [Hearn  gives  a  vivid  pencil  drawing 
of  one,  two  thirds  of  an  inch  long.]  I  spend  my 
nights  in  making  war  upon  him  and  my  days  in 
watching  the  murmuring  current  of  the  Missis 
sippi  and  the  most  wonderful  sunsets  on  the  Ar- 
kansawside  that  I  ever  saw.  Don't  think  I  should 
like  to  swim  the  Mississippi  at  this  point.  Per 
haps  the  Dean  may  be  here  on  Wednesday.  I 
don't  like  Memphis  at  all,  but  cannot  express 
my  opinion  in  a  postal  card.  They  have  a  pretty 
fountain  here — much  better  than  that  old  brass 
candlestick  in  Cincinnati." 

The  next  postal  card  was  mailed  on  October  30, 
and  contains  one  of  the  cleverest  drawings  of  the 
series.  Hearn  says:  "It  has  been  raining  all  day, 
and  I  have  had  nothing  to  do  but  look  at  it. 
Half  wish  was  back  in  Cincinnati." 

Then  follows  a  rude  sketch  of  part  of  the  Ohio 
River  and  its  confluence  with  the  Mississippi.  A 


36        Letters  from  The  Raven 

huddle  of  buildings  represents  Cincinnati.  An 
other  huddle  represents  Memphis.  There  stands 
the  raven,  his  eyes  bulging  out  of  his  head,  look 
ing  at  some  object  in  the  distance.  The  object  is  a 
huge  snail  which  is  leaving  New  Orleans  and  is 
labelled  the  Thompson  Dean. 

One  of  the  finest  of  all  the  letters  he  wrote  to 
Mr.  Watkin  was  from  Memphis.  It  is  dated  Oc 
tober  31,  1877.  In  this  he  made  a  prediction 
which  afterwards  came  literally  true.  He  seemed 
to  foresee  that,  while  in  his  loneliness  he  would 
write  often  to  Mr.  Watkin,  once  he  became  en 
grossed  in  his  work  and  saw  new  sights  and  new 
faces,  his  letters  would  be  written  at  greater  inter 
vals. 

"  DEAR  OLD  DAD  :  I  am  writing  in  a  great  big, 
dreary  room  of  this  great,  dreary  house.  It  over 
looks  the  Mississippi.  I  hear  the  puffing  and  the 
panting  of  the  cotton  boats  and  the  deep  calls 
of  the  river  traffic;  but  I  neither  hear  nor  see  the 
Thompson  Dean.  She  will  not  be  here  this  week, 
I  am  afraid,  as  she  only  left  New  Orleans  to-day. 

Cf  My  room  is  carpetless  and  much  larger  than 
your  office.  Old  blocked-up  stairways  come  up 
here  and  there  through  the  floor  ordown  through 


Letters  from  The  Raven       37 

the  ceiling,  and  they  suddenly  disappear.  There 
is  a  great  red  daub  on  one  wall  as  though  made 
by  a  bloody  hand  when  somebody  was  stagger 
ing  down  the  stairway.  There  are  only  a  few  panes 
of  glass  in  the  windows.  I  am  the  first  tenant  of 
the  room  for  fifteen  years.  Spiders  are  busy  spin 
ning  their  dusty  tapestries  in  every  corner,  and 
between  the  bannisters  of  the  old  stairways.  The 
planks  of  the  floor  are  sprung,  and  when  I  walk 
along  the  room  at  night  it  sounds  as  though 
Something  or  Somebody  was  following  me  in  the 
dark.  And  then  being  in  the  third  story  makes 
it  much  more  ghostly. 

"I  had  hard  work  to  get  awashstand  and  towel 
put  in  this  great,  dreary  room;  for  the  landlord 
had  not  washed  his  face  for  more  than  a  quarter 
of  a  century,  and  regarded  washing  as  an  expen 
sive  luxury.  At  last  I  succeeded  with  the  assist 
ance  of  the  barkeeper,  who  has  taken  a  liking  to 
me. 

"Perhaps  you  have  seen  by  the  paper  that 
General  N.  B.  Forrest  died  here  night  before  last. 
To-day  they  are  burying  him.  I  see  troops  of  men 
in  grey  uniforms  parading  the  streets,and  the  busi 
ness  of  the  city  is  suspended  in  honor  of  the  dead. 
And  they  are  firing  weary,  dreary  minute  guns. 


38        Letters  from  The  Raven 

CCI  am  terribly  tired  of  this  dirty,  dusty,  ugly 
town,  —  a  city  only  forty  years  old,  but  looking 
old  as  the  ragged,  fissured  bluffs  on  which  it 
stands.  It  is  full  of  great  houses,  which  were  once 
grand,  but  are  now  as  waste  and  dreary  within  and 
without  as  the  huge  building  in  which  I  am  lodg 
ing  for  the  sum  of  twenty-five  cents  a  night.  I  am 
obliged  to  leave  my  things  in  the  barkeeper's 
care  at  night  for  fear  of  their  being  stolen ;  and  he 
thinks  me  a  little  reckless  because  I  sleep  with 
my  money  under  my  pillow.  You  see  the  doors 
of  my  room  —  there  are  three  of  them  —  lock 
badly. . . .  They  are  ringing  those  dead  bells  every 
moment, — it  is  a  very  unpleasant  sound.  I  sup 
pose  you  will  not  laugh  if  I  tell  you  that  I  have 
been  crying  a  good  deal  of  nights, — just  like  I 
used  to  do  when  a  college  boy  returned  from  va 
cation.  It  is  a  lonely  feeling,  this  of  finding  one 
self  alone  in  a  strange  city,  where  you  never  meet 
a  face  that  you  know;  and  when  all  the  faces  you 
did  know  seem  to  have  been  dead  faces,  disap 
peared  for  an  indefinite  time.  I  have  not  travelled 
enough  the  last  eight  years,  I  suppose:  it  does 
not  do  to  become  attached  insensibly  to  places 
and  persons.  ...  I  suppose  you  have  had  some 
postal  cards  from  me;  and  you  are  beginning  to 


Letters  from  The  Raven       39 

think  I  am  writing  quite  often.  I  suppose  I  am, 
and  you  know  the  reason  why;  and  perhaps  you 
are  thinking  to  yourself:  cHe  feels  a  little  blue 
now,  and  is  accordingly  very  affectionate,  &c. ; 
but  by  and  by  he  will  be  quite  forgetful,  and  per 
haps  will  not  write  so  often  as  at  present/ 

"Well,  I  suppose  you  are  right.  I  live  in  and 
by  extremes  and  am  on  an  extreme  now.  I  write 
extremely  often,  because  I  feel  alone  and  ex 
tremely  alone.  By  and  by,  if  I  get  well,  I  shall 
write  only  by  weeks;  and  with  time  perhaps  only 
by  months;  and  when  at  last  comes  the  rush 
of  business  and  busy  newspaper  work,  only  by 
years, — until  the  times  and  places  of  old  friend 
ship  are  forgotten,  and  old  faces  have  become 
dim  as  dreams,  and  these  little  spider-threads  of 
attachments  will  finally  yield  to  the  long  strain 
of  a  thousand  miles." 

A  postal  card  of  November  3  says:  "Will  leave 
Memphis  Tuesday  next,  PERHAPS.  Am  begin 
ning  to  doubt  the  existence  of  the  Thompson 
Dean."  November  13,  1877,  finds  Hearn  over 
joyed  to  be  in  New  Orleans.  The  postal  card 
bears  in  the  left-hand  corner  a  drawing  of  a  door 
labelled  "228."  In  a  window  at  the  side  of  the 


40       Letters  from  The  Raven 

door  sits  the  raven.  On  the  other  side  is  the  le 
gend: 

Raven  liveth  at 

228  Earonne  St. 

New  Orleans 
Care  Mrs.  Bustellos 

Then  comes  another  raven,  with  the  doggerel: 

Indite  him  an  epistle. 

Dont  give  him  particular  H — . 

And  finally  the  remarks: 

Pretty  Louisiana!  Nice  Louisiana! 

Hearn  began  to  send  letters  to  one  of  the  Cincin 
nati  papers,  but  was  soon  in  a  terrible  plight,  as 
his  postal  card  of  December  9  demonstrates: 

"  I  am  in  a  very  desperate  fix  here,  —  having  no 
credit.  If  you  can  help  me  a  little  within  the  next 
few  days,  please  try.  I  fear  I  must  ask  you  to  ask 
Davie  to  sell  all  my  books  except  the  French 
ones.  The  need  of  money  has  placed  me  in  so 
humiliating  a  position  that  I  cannot  play  the  part 
of  correspondent  any  longer.  The  Commercial's 
not  sent  me  anything,  and  I  cannot  even  get 
stamps.  I  landed  in  New  Orleans  with  a  frac 
tion  over  twenty  dollars,  which  I  paid  out  in  ad 
vance." 


Letters  from  The  Raven       41 

Mr.  Watkin  was  unable  to  make  the  reply  he 
desired,  and  was  even  prevented  by  other  mat 
ters  from  answering  in  any  way  until  weeks  later. 
It  was  this  silence  which  caused  Hearn  to  mail 
a  postal  card,  on  January  13,  1878,  which  con 
tained  one  of  his  cleverest  drawings.  In  the  back 
ground  is  shown  the  sky  with  a  crescent  moon. 
In  the  foreground,  upright  from  a  grass-grown 
grave,  stands  a  tombstone,  bearing  the  inscrip 
tion: 

H.  w. 

DIED 

NOV.  29 

1877 

Perched  on  top  of  the  stone  is  a  particularly  rag 
ged  and  particularly  black  raven.  It  was  the  last 
gleam  of  fun  that  was  to  come  from  him  for  some 
time.  He  was  to  experience  some  of  the  bitter 
est  moments  of  his  life,  moments  which  explained 
his  hatred  of  New  Orleans,  as  the  slanders  of 
the  newspaper  men  of  Cincinnati  embittered  him 
against  that  city. 

The  following  seems  to  be  the  first,  or  one  of 
the  first,  letters  written  by  him  after  his  arrival  in 
New  Orleans.  As  usual,  it  is  undated: 


42        Letters  from  The  Raven 

"DEAR  OLD  FRIEND:  I  cannot  say  how  glad 
1  was  to  hear  from  you.  I  did  not — unfortunately 
— get  your  letter  at  Memphis;  it  would  have 


DRAWING  ON  A   POSTAL  CARD  SENT  TO  WATKIN  TO 
REMIND  HIM   HE   HAD  NOT  WRITTEN 

cheered  me  up.  I  am  slowly,  very  slowly,  getting 
better. 

"The  wealth  of  a  world  is  here, — unworked 
gold  in  the  ore,  one  might  say;  the  paradise  of 
the  South  is  here,  deserted  and  half  in  ruins.  I 
never  beheld  anything  so  beautiful  and  so  sad. 
When  I  saw  it  first — sunrise  over  Louisiana — 
the  tears  sprang  to  my  eyes.  It  was  like  young 
death,  —  a  dead  bride  crowned  with  orange  flow- 


Letters  from  The  Raven       43 

ers, — a  dead  face  that  asked  for  a  kiss.  I  cannot  say 
how  fair  and  rich  and  beautiful  this  dead  South 
is.  It  has  fascinated  me.  I  have  resolved  to  live 
in  it;  I  could  not  leave  it  for  that  chill  and  damp 
Northern  life  again.  Yes ;  I  think  you  could  make 
it  pay  to  come  here.  One  can  do  much  here  with 
very  little  capital.  The  great  thing  is,  of  course, 
the  sugar-cane  business.  Everybody  who  goes 
into  it  almost  does  well.  Some  make  half  a  million 
a  year  at  it.  The  capital  required  to  build  a  sugar 
mill,  &c.,  is  of  course  enormous;  but  men  often 
begin  with  a  few  acres  and  become  well-to-do  in 
a  few  years.  Louisiana  thirsts  for  emigrants  as  a 
dry  land  for  water.  I  was  thinking  of  writing  to 
tell  you  that  I  think  you  could  do  something  in 
the  way  of  the  fruit  business  to  make  it  worth 
your  while  to  come  down, — oranges,  bananas,  and 
tropical  plants  sell  here  at  fabulously  low  prices. 
Bananas  are  of  course  perishable  freight  when 
ripe;  but  oranges  are  not,  and  I  hear  they  sell  at 
fifty  cents  a  hundred,  and  even  less  than  that  a 
short  distance  from  the  city.  So  there  are  many 
other  things  here  one  could  speculate  in.  I  think 
with  one  partner  North  and  one  South,  a  firm 
could  make  money  in  the  fruit  business  here.  But 
there,  you  know  I  don't  know  anything  about 


44        Letters  from  The  Raven 

business.  What's  the  good  of  asking  ME  about 
business  ? 

"  If  you  come  here,  you  can  live  for  almost  no 
thing.  Food  is  ridiculously  cheap, — that  is, cheap 
food.  Then  there  are  first-class  restaurants  here, 


FACSIMILE  OF  ENVELOPE  ADDRESSED  TO  MR.  WATKIN 
BY   HEARN 

where  the  charge  is  three  dollars  for  dinner.  But 
board  and  lodging  is  very  cheap.  .  .  . 

"  I  have  written  twice  to  the  Commerical,  but 
have  only  seen  one  of  my  letters,  —  the  Forrest 
letter.  I  have  a  copy.  I  fear  the  other  letters  will 
not  be  published.  Too  enthusiastic,  you  know. 
But  I  could  not  write  coolly  about  beautiful  Lou 
isiana.  .  .  . 

"Oh,  you  must  come  to  New  Orleans  some- 


Letters  from  The  Raven       45 

time, — no  nasty  chill,  no  coughs  and  cold.  The 
healthiest  climate  in  the  world.  Eternal  summer. 

"  It  is  damp  at  nights  however,  and  fires  are  lit 
of  evenings  to  dry  the  rooms.  You  know  the  land 
is  marshy.  Even  the  dead  are  unburied, — they  are 
only  vaulted  up.  The  cemeteries  are  vaults,  not 
graveyards.  Only  the  Jews  bury  their  dead;  and 
their  dead  are  buried  in  water.  It  is  water  three — 
yes,  two — feet  underground. 

"I  like  the  people,  especially  the  French;  but 
of  course  I  might  yet  have  reason  to  change  my 
opinion. .  . . 

"Would  you  be  surprised  to  hear  that  I  have 
been  visiting  my  UNCLE?  Would  you  be  aston 
ished  to  learn  that  I  was  on  the  verge  of  pov 
erty  ?  No.  Then,  forsooth,  I  will  be  discreet.  One 
can  live  here  for  twenty  cents  a  day — what's  the 
odds?... 

"Yours  truly, 

"THE  PRODIGAL  SON  " 

On  the  reverse  side  of  an  application  for  a  money 
order,  Hearn  wrote  toWatkin  in  187  8,  some  con 
siderable  time  after  his  arrival  in  New  Orleans: 

"I  see  the  Cincinnati  Commercial  once  in  a 
while,  and  do  not  find  any  difference  in  it.  My 


46       Letters  from  The  Raven 

departure  affedleth  its  columns  not  at  all.  In 
sooth  a  man  on  a  daily  newspaper  is  as  a  grain 
of  mustard  seed.  Hope  I  may  do  better  in  New 
Orleans.  It  is  time  for  a  fellow  to  get  out  of  Cin 
cinnati  when  they  begin  to  call  it  the  Paris  of 
America.  But  there  are  some  worse  places  than 
Cincinnati.  There  is  Memphis,  for  example." 

At  one  period,  early  during  his  stay  in  New 
Orleans,  when  Hearn  began  to  look  back  upon 
what  he  had  accomplished,  or  rather  had  failed 
to  accomplish,  in  his  life,  he  sank  into  the  depths 
of  despair.  As  was  his  wont,  he  wrote  from  his 
heart  to  his  sole  friend,  depending  upon  him  not 
only  for  cheer,  but  for  advice.  Mr.  Watkin  re 
fused  to  take  this  long  letter  seriously,  teased 
him  about  it  rather,  and  advised  him  not  to  go 
to  England,  but  to  remain  here  in  this  country 
and  persist  in  one  line  of  work.  The  Hearn  let 
ter,  which  follows,  belongs  to  the  month  of  Feb 
ruary,  1878: 

"DEAR  OLD  MAN:  I  shall  be  twenty-eight 
years  old  in  a  few  days, — a  very  few  days  more; 
and  I  am  frightened  to  think  how  few  they  are. 
I  am  afraid  to  look  at  the  almanac  to  find  out 
what  day  The  Day  falls  upon, — it  might  fall 


Letters  from  The  Raven       47 

upon  a  Friday, — and  I  can't  shake  off  a  super 
stition  about  it, — a  superstition  always  outlives 
a  religion.  Looking  back  at  the  file  of  these 
twenty-eight  years,  which  grow  more  shadowy 
in  receding,  I  can  remember  and  distinguish  the 
features  of  at  least  twenty.  There  is  an  alarming 
similarity  of  misery  in  all  their  faces;  and  how 
ever  misty  the  face,  the  outlines  of  misery  are 
remarkably  perceptible.  Each,  too,  seems  to  be 
a  record  of  similar  events, —  thwarting  of  will 
and  desire  in  every  natural  way,  ill  success  in 
every  aim,  denial  of  almost  every  special  wish, 
compulsion  to  act  upon  the  principle  that  every 
thing  agreeable  was  wrong  and  everything  dis 
agreeable  right,  unpleasant  recognition  of  self- 
weakness  and  inability  to  win  success  by  indi 
vidual  force, — not  to  mention  enormous  ad 
denda  in  the  line  of  novel  and  wholly  unexpected 
disappointments.  Somehow  or  other,  whenever 
I  succeeded  in  an  undertaking,  the  fruit  acquired 
seemed  tasteless  and  vapid;  but  usually,  when 
one  step  more  would  have  been  victory,  some 
extraordinary  and  unanticipated  obstacle  rose  up 
in  impassability.  I  must  acknowledge,  however, 
that,  as  a  general  rule,  the  unexpected  obstacle 
was  usually  erected  by  myself; — some  loss  of 


48       Letters  from  The  Raven 

temper,  impatience,  extra-sensitiveness,  betrayed 
and  indulged  instead  of  concealed,  might  be  cred 
ited  with  a  large  majority  of  failures. 

"Without  a  renovation  of  individuality,  how 
ever,  I  really  can  see  no  prospect,  beyond  the 
twenty-eighth  year,  of  better  years  —  the  years 
seem  to  grow  worse  in  regular  succession.  As  to 
the  renovation, — it  is  hardly  possible:  don't 
you  think  so?  Sometimes  I  think  small  people 
without  great  wills  and  great  energies  have  no 
business  trying  to  do  much  in  this  wonderful 
country ;  the  successful  men  all  appear  to  have 
gigantic  shoulders  and  preponderant  deport 
ments.  When  I  look  into  the  private  histories 
of  the  young  men  who  achieved  success  in  the 
special  line  I  have  been  vainly  endeavoring  to 
follow  to  some  termination,  I  find  they  generally 
hanged  themselves  or  starved  to  death,  while 
their  publishers  made  enormous  fortunes  and 
world-wide  reputations  after  their  unfortunate 
and  idealistic  customers  were  dead.  There  were 
a  few  exceptions,  but  these  exceptions  were  cases 
of  extraordinary  personal  vigor  and  vital  force. 
So  while  my  whole  nature  urges  me  to  continue 
as  I  have  begun,  I  see  nothing  in  prospect  ex 
cept  starvation,  sickness,  artificial  wants,  which 


Letters  from  The  Raven       49 

I  shall  never  be  wealthy  enough  to  even  par 
tially  gratify,  and  perhaps  utter  despair  at  the 
end.  Then  again,  while  I  have  not  yet  lost  all 
confidence  in  myself,  I  feel  strongly  doubtful 
whether  I  shall  ever  have  means  or  leisure  to 
develop  the  latent  (possible)  ability  within  me 
to  do  something  decently  meritorious.  Perhaps, 
had  I  not  been  constrained  to  ambition  by  neces 
sity,  I  should  never  have  had  any  such  yearnings 
about  the  unattainable  and  iridescent  bubbles  of 
literary  success.  But  that  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  question.  Such  is  the  proposition  now:  how 
can  I  get  out  of  hell  when  I  have  got  halfway 
down  to  the  bottom  of  it?  Can  I  carry  on  any 
kind  of  business?  I  can  fancy  that  I  see  you  throw 
back  your  head  and  wag  your  beard  with  a  hearty 
laugh  at  the  mere  idea,  the  preposterous  idea! 

"  Can  I  keep  any  single  situation  for  any  great 
length  of  time?  You  know  I  can't, — couldn't 
stand  it;  hate  the  mere  idea  of  it, — something 
horribly  disagreeable  would  be  sure  to  happen. 
Then  again,  I  can't  even  stay  in  one  place  for 
any  healthy  period  of  time.  I  can't  stay  any 
where  without  getting  in  trouble.  And  my  heart 
always  feels  like  a  bird,  fluttering  impatiently  for 
the  migratiro  season.  I  think  I  could  be  quite 


50        Letters  from  The  Raven 

happy  if  I  were  a  swallow  and  could  have  a  sum 
mer  nest  in  the  ear  of  an  Egyptian  colossus  or 
a  broken  capital  of  the  Parthenon. 

"I  know  just  exactly  what  I  should  like  to  do, 
— to  wander  forever  here  and  there  until  I  got 
very  old  and  apish  and  grey,  and  died, — just  to 
wander  where  I  pleased  and  keep  myself  to  my 
self,  and  never  bother  anybody.  But  that  I  can't 
do.  Then  what  in  the  name  of  the  Nine  Incar 
nations  of  Vishnu,  can  I  do?  Please  try  to  tell  me. 

"Shall  I,  in  spite  of  myopia,  seek  for  a  pas 
sage  on  some  tropical  vessel,  and  sail  hither  and 
thither  on  the  main,  like  the  ghost  of  Gawain 
on  a  wandering  wind,  till  I  have  learned  all  the 
ropes  and  spars  by  heart,  and  know  by  sight  the 
various  rigging  of  all  the  navies  of  the  world? 

"Shall  I  try  to  go  back  to  England  at  once, 
instead  of  waiting  to  be  a  millionaire?  (This  is  a 
seaport,  remember:  that  is  why  I  dread  to  leave 
it  for  further  inland  towns.  I  feel  as  if  I  could  al 
most  catch  a  distant  glimpse  of  the  mighty  dome 
of  St.  Paul's  from  the  levee  of  New  Orleans.) 

"Shall  I  begin  to  eat  opium,  and  enjoy  in 
fancy  all  that  reality  refuses,  and  may  forever 
refuse  me? 

"Shall  I  go  to  Texas  and  start  a  cheap  bean- 


Letters  from  The  Raven       51 

house — (hideous  occupation!)  with  my  pard, 
who  wants  me  to  go  there? 

"Shall  I  cease  to  worry  over  fate  and  facts, 
and  go  right  to  hell  on  a  2.40,  till  I  get  tired 
even  of  hell  and  blow  my  highly  sensitive  and 
exquisitely  delicate  brains  out? 

"Shall  I  try  to  get  acquainted  with  Yellow 
Jack  and  the  Charity  Hospital, — or  try  to  get 
to  St.  Louis  on  the  next  boat?  Honestly,  I  'd  like 
to  know.  I'm  so  tired, —  so  awfully,  fearfully, 
disgustingly  tired  of  wasting  my  life  without  be 
ing  able  to  help  it.  Don't  tell  me  I  could  have 
helped  it, —  I  know  better.  No  man  could  have 
helped  doing  anything  already  done.  I  hate  the 
gilded  slavery  of  newspaper  work, —  the  starva 
tion  of  Bohemianism, — the  bore  of  waiting  for 
a  chance  to  become  an  insurance  agent  or  a  mag 
azine  writer, — and  oh,  venerable  friend,  I  hate  a 
thousand  times  worst  of  all  to  work  for  some 
body  else.  I  hoped  to  become  independent  when 
I  came  down  here, —  to  work  for  myself;  and  I 
have  made  a  most  damnable  failure  of  it.  In  ad 
dition  to  the  rest,  my  horrid  eye  is  bad  yet.  I 
had  lost  nearly  half  the  field  of  vision  from  con 
gestion  of  the  retina  when  I  wrote  you  the  rather 
frantic  epistles  which  you  would  not  answer. 


52       Letters  from  The  Raven 

Now  I  see  only  in  patches,  but  am  getting  along 
better  and  hope  to  be  quite  well  in  time, — cer 
tainly  much  better.  You  see  I  can  write  a  pretty 
long  letter  to  while  away  Sunday  idleness." 

Hearn  had  reached  New  Orleans  at  the  time  the 
yellow  fever  was  raging  there, and  in  April,  1 878, 
he  wrote  reassuring  his  old  friend  that  his  health 
was  not  endangered: 

"  DEAR  OLD  MAN  :  Yellow  Jack  has  not  caught 
me;  and  since  I  was  laid  up  with  the  dengue  or 
break-bone  fever,  I  believe  I  am  acclimated. . . . 
They  sprinkle  the  streets  here  with  watering- 
carts  filled  with  carbolic  acid,  pour  lime  in  the 
gutters,  and  make  all  the  preparations  against 
fever  possible,  except  the  only  sensible  one  of 
cleaning  the  stinking  gutters  and  stopping  up  the 
pest-holes.  Politicians  make  devilish  bad  health 
officers.  When  I  tell  you  that  all  of  our  gutters 
are  haunted  by  eels  whose  bite  is  certain  death, 

you  can  imagine  how  vile  they  are Nobody 

works  here  in  summer.  The  population  would 
starve  to  death  anywhere  else.  Neither  does 
anybody  think  of  working  in  the  sun  if  they  can 
help  it.  That  is  why  we  have  no  sunstroke.  The 
horses  usually  wear  hats." 


Letters  from  The  Raven        53 

After  a  seven  months'  hunt  for  work  Hearn 
saw  some  of  the  hardest  times  of  his  life  in  New 
Orleans.  The  situation,  as  he  described  it  in  his 
letter  to  Mr.  Watkin,  could  not  have  been  worse 
than  when,  as  a  waif,  he  wandered  the  streets 
of  London.  It  was  postmarked  June  14,  1878. 

"DEAR  OLD  MAN:  Wish  you  would  tell  me 
something  wise  and  serviceable.  I  'm  completely 
and  hopelessly  busted  up  and  flattened  out,  but 
I  don't  write  this  because  I  have  any  desire  to 
ask  you  for  pecuniary  assistance, —  have  asked 
for  that  elsewhere.  Have  been  here  seven  months 
and  never  made  one  cent  in  the  city.  No  possi 
ble  prospect  of  doing  anything  in  this  town  now 
or  within  twenty-five  years.  Books  and  clothes 
all  gone,  shirt  sticking  through  seat  of  my  pants, 
—  literary  work  rejected  East, —  get  a  five-cent 
meal  once  in  two  days, —  don't  know  one  night 
where  I  'm  going  to  sleep  next, — and  am  d — d 
sick  with  climate  into  the  bargain.  Yellow  fever 
supposed  to  be  in  the  city.  Newspapers  expected 
to  bust  up.  Twenty  dollars  per  month  is  a  good 
living  here;  but  it's  simply  impossible  to  make 
even  ten.  Have  been  cheated  and  swindled  con 
siderably;  and  have  cheated  and  swindled  others 


54       Letters  from  The  Raven 

in  retaliation.  We  are  about  even.  D — n  New 
Orleans ! — wish  I  'd  never  seen  it.  I  am  thinking 
of  going  to  Texas.  How  do  you  like  the  idea? — 
to  Dallas  or  Waco.  Eyes  about  played  out,  I 
guess.  Have  a  sort  of  idea  that  I  can  be  won 
derfully  economical  if  I  get  any  more  good  luck. 
Can  save  fifteen  out  of  twenty  dollars  a  month  — 
under  new  conditions  (?).  Have  no  regular  place 
of  residence  now.  Can't  you  drop  a  line  to  P.  O. 
next  week,  letting  shining  drops  of  wisdom  drip 
from  the  end  of  your  pen?" 

It  was  right  after  this  in  the  same  month, 
when  his  fortunes  were  at  the  lowest  ebb,  that 
things  took  a  turn  for  the  better,  as  is  indicated 
by  the  following,  in  which  in  jest  he  proposes  to 
engage  in  a  "get-rich-quick"  scheme: 

"  DEAR  OLD  MAN  :  Somehow  or  other,  when  a 
man  gets  right  down  inthedirt,hejumpsupagain. 
The  day  after  I  wrote  you,  I  got  a  position  (with 
out  asking  for  it)  as  assistant  editor  on  the  Item, 
at  a  salary  considerably  smaller  than  that  I  re 
ceived  on  the  Commercial(of  Cincinnati),  but  large 
enough  to  enable  mie  to  save  half  of  it.  There 
fore  I  hasten  to  return  Will's  generous  favor  with 
the  most  sincere  thanks  and  kindest  wishes.  You 


Letters  from  The  Raven        55 

would  scarcely  know  me  now,  for  my  face  is  thin 
ner  than  a  knife  and  my  skin  very  dark.  The 
Southern  sun  has  turned  me  into  a  mulatto.  I 
have  ceased  to  wear  spectacles,  and  my  hair  is  wild 
and  ghastly.  I  am  seriously  thinking  of  going  into 
a  fraud,  which  will  pay  like  hell,  —  an  advertis 
ing  fraud:  buying  land  by  the  pound  and  selling 
it  in  boxes  at  one  dollar  per  box.  I  have  a  party 
here  now  who  wants  to  furnish  bulk  of  capital 
and  go  shares.  He  is  an  old  hand  at  the  dodge. 
It  would  be  carried  along  under  false  names,  of 
course;  and  there  is  really  no  money  in  honest 

work I  think  I  shall  see  you  in  the  fall  or 

spring;  and  when  I  come  again  to  Cincinnati,  it 
will  be,  my  dear  old  man,  as  you  would  wish,  with 
money  in  my  pocket.  It  did  me  much  good  to 
hear  from  you ;  for  I  fancied  my  postal  card  ask 
ing  for  help  might  have  offended  you;  and  I 
feared  you  had  resolved  that  I  was  a  fraud.  Well, 
I  am  something  of  a  fraud,  but  not  to  every 
body I  don't  like  the  people  here  at  all,  and 

would  not  live  here  continually.  But  it  is  con 
venient  now,  for  I  could  not  live  cheaper  else 
where." 

Again  undated,  but  belonging  to  his  early  New 


56        Letters  from  The  Raven 

Orleans  period,  is  the  letter  in  which,  after  discuss 
ing  some  business  venture  he  had  in  mind,  he 
says: 

"  There  is  a  strong  feeling  down  here  that  the 
South  will  soon  be  the  safest  place  to  live  in. 
The  labor  troubles  North  promise  to  be  some 
thing  terrible.  I  assure  you  that  few  well-posted 
newspaper  men  here  would  care  to  exchange  lo 
calities  until  after  these  labor  troubles  have  as 
sumed  some  definite  shape.  There  is  no  labor 
element  here  that  is  dangerous. 

"There  are  some  businesses  which  would  pay 
here :  a  cheap  restaurant,  a  cheap  swimming  bath, 
or  a  cheap  laundry.  Money  just  now  could  be 
coined  at  any  of  the-  things.  Everything  else 
here  is  dead.  I  met  a  '  1y  educated  Jew  here 
not  long  ago,  who  had  iiv  '  and  made  money 
in  New  Zealand,  Martinique,  British  Columbia, 
Panama,  Sandwich  Islands,  Buenos  Ayres,  and 
San  Francisco.  CI  have  been/  he  said,  c  almost 
every  place  where  money  can  be  made,  and  I  know 
almost  every  dodge  known  to  Hebrews  in  the 
money-making  way.  But  I  do  not  see  a  single 
chance  to  make  anything  in  this  town.'  He  left 
for  the  North.  He  was  from  London. 

"  I  should  like  to  see  you  down  here,  if  it  were 


Letters  from  The  Raven        57 

not  for  malaria.  You  would  not  escape  the  reg 
ular  marsh  fever;  but  that  is  not  dangerous 
when  the  symptoms  are  recognized  and  promptly 
treated.  When  I  had  it  I  did  not  know  what  it 
was.  I  took  instinctively  a  large  dose  of  castor 
oil.  Sometime  after  I  met  the  druggist,  a  good 
old  German,  who  sold  it  me.  CI  never  expected 
to  see  you  again/  he  said;  cyou  had  a  very  bad 
case  of  fever  when  I  saw  you/ 

"But  every  body  gets  that  here.  You  live  so  ab 
stemiously  and  thirst  so  little  after  the  flesh-pots 
that  I  think  you  would  not  have  much  to  fear. 
I  go  swimming  a  good  deal;  but  I  find  the  water 
horribly  warm.  The  lake  seems  to  be  situated 
directly  over  the  great  -nace  of  Hell.  .  .  . 

"I'll  be  doubly  d  -  I  have  the  vaguest  idea 
what  I  shall  do.  *iave  a  delightfully  lazy  life 
here;  and  I  assure  you  I  never  intend  to  work 
fourteen  hours  a  day  again.  But  whether  to  leave 
here  I  don't  know.  I  'm  only  making  about  ten 
dollars  a  week,  but  that  is  better  than  making 
twenty-five  dollars  and  being  a  slave  to  a  news 
paper.  I  write  what  I  please,  go  when  I  please, 
and  quit  work  when  I  please.  I  have  really  only 
three  hours  aday  office  duty, —  mostly  consumed 
in  waiting  for  proofs.  If  I  stay  here,  I  can  make 


58        Letters  from  The  Raven 

more  soon.  But  I  don't  really  care  a  damn  whether 
I  make  much  money  or  not.  If  I  have  to  make 
money  by  working  hard  for  it,  I  shall  certainly 
remain  poor.  I  have  done  the  last  hard  work  I 
shall  ever  do. 

"On  the  success  of  some  literary  work,  how 
ever,  I  have  a  vague  idea  of  receiving  enough 
ready  money  to  invest  in  some  promising  little 
specs,  here, — of  the  nature  I  have  already  hinted 
at.  If  they  pay,  they  will  pay  admirably.  If  I  lose 
the  money,  I  shan't  die  of  starvation.  .  .  . 

"I  shall  certainly  not  leave  here  before  seeing 
Cuba.  It  would  be  a  mortal  sin  to  be  so  near  the 
Antilles  and  yet  never  have  sailed  that  sapphire 
sea  yclept  the  Spanish  Main. 

"I  never  felt  so  funny  in  my  whole  life.  I 
have  no  ambition,  no  loves,  no  anxieties, — some 
times  a-  vague  unrest  without  a  motive,  some 
times  a  feeling  as  if  my  heart  was  winged  and 
trying  to  soar  away,  sometimes  a  vague  longing 
for  pleasurable  wanderings,  sometimes  a  half- 
crazy  passion  for  a  great  night  with  wine  and  wo 
men  and  music.  But  these  are  much  like  flitting 
dreams,  and  amount  to  little.  They  are  ephe 
meral.  The  wandering  passion  is  strongest  of  all ; 
and  I  feel  no  inclination  to  avail  myself  of  the 


Letters  from  The  Raven       59 

only  anchor  which  keeps  the  ship  of  a  man's  life 
in  port. 

"Then  again, — I  have  curiously  regained  me 
mories  of  long  ago,  which  I  thought  utterly  for 
gotten.  Leisure  lends  memory  a  sharp  definition. 
Life  here  is  so  lazy, —  nights  are  so  liquid  with 
tropic  moonlight, —  days  are  so  splendid  with 
green  and  gold, —  summer  is  so  languid  with  per 
fume  and  warmth, — that  I  hardly  know  whether 
I  am  dreaming  or  awake.  It  is  all  a  dream  here, 
I  suppose,  and  will  seem  a  dream  even  after  the 
sharp  awakening  of  another  voyage,  the  immor 
tal  gods  only  know  where.  Ah!  Gods!  beautiful 
Gods  of  antiquity!  One  can  only  feel  you,  and 
know  you,  and  believe  in  you,  after  living  in  this 
sweet,  golden  air.  What  is  the  good  of  dreaming 
about  earthly  women,  when  one  is  in  love  with 
marble,  and  ivory,  and  the  bronzes  of  two  thou 
sand  years  ago?  Let  me  be  the  last  of  the  idol- 
worshippers,  O  golden  Venus,  and  sacrifice  to 
thee  the  twin  doves  thou  lovest,  —  the  birds  of 
Paphos,  —  the  Cythendae ! " 

Hearn  had  had  his  troubles  with  New  Orleans 
and  Cincinnati  newspaper  men,  some  of  whom 
pirated  his  translations,  while  others  printed  slan 
derous  stories  concerning  his  manner  of  living, — 


60       Letters  from  The  Raven 

slanders  which  Mr.  Watkin  combated  in  a  per 
sonal  letter  to  the  editor  of  the  Commercial  some 
years  after,  when  his  attackers  again  became  busy. 
On  July  10,  1878,  Hearn  wrote: 

"  MY  DEAR  OLD  MAN  :  Was  delighted  to  hear 
from  you.  I  am  very  glad  the  thing  is  as  much  of 
a  mystery  to  you  as  it  is  to  me.  I  can  only  sur 
mise  that  it  must  have  been  a  piece  of  spite  work 
on  the  part  of  a  certain  gentleman  connected  with 
the  N.  O.  'fimeS)  who  printed  some  of  my  work 
before,  and  got  a  raking  for  it.  My  position  here 
is  a  peculiar  one,  and  not  as  stable  as  I  should 
like,  so  that  if  it  were  made  to  appear  that  I  had 
re-utilized  stuff  from  the  Item^  I  would  certainly 
get  into  trouble.  I  have  been  very  ill  for  a  week, 
break-bone  fever.  I  do  not  expect  to  return  North 
'broke/  cCahlves  is  too  scace  in  dis  country  to 
be  killed  for  a  prodigal  son.'  I  wish  you  were 
near  that  I  might  whisper  projects  of  colossal 
magnitude  in  your  ear.  I  am  working  like  hell 
to  make  a  good  raise  for  Europe. Will  write  more 
soon.  Editor  away  to-day  and  the  whole  paper 
on  my  hands. 

"  Monday.  Delayed  posting  letter.  I  find  this  cli 
mate  terribly  enervating.  No  one  could  have  led 


Letters  from  The  Raven       61 

a  more  monastic  life  than  I  have  done  here;  yet 
I  find  I  cannot  even  think  energetically.  The 
mind  seems  to  lose  all  power  of  aftivity.  I  have 
been  collecting  materials  for  magazine  articles, 
and  I  can't  write  them  out.  I  have  only  been 
able  to  do  mechanical  work, — translating,  &c., 
and  one  Romanesque  essay,  which  was  succes 
sively  rejected  by  three  magazines.  Wish  I  was 
on  a  polar  expedition. 

"I  have  been  an  awfully  good  boy  down  here, 
and  have  no  news  to  tell  you  of  amours  or  curi 
ous  experiences. " 

Hearn  once  more  tells  of  his  trouble  with  a  Cin 
cinnati  paper,  alleging  the  owners  failed  to  pay 
him  for  his  New  Orleans  correspondence,  and 
how  finally  he  was  "happily  discharged." 

Then  he  resumes : "  By  the  way,  I  wrote  a  poem 
for  the  decoration  of  the  soldiers' graves  at  Chal- 
mette  National  Cemetery,  on  the  joth  inst.  I 
think  it  was.  The  poem  was  read  by  Col.  Wright 
of  this  city  at  the  decoration  and  published  in  the 
Democrat.  It  was  the  first  bit  of  rhyme  I  wrote, 
and  so  you  must  excuse  it.  But  it  is  not  as  good 
as — 


62       Letters  from  The  Raven 

"The  love  of  He  am  and  Watkin^ 
What  is  its  kin? — 
//  is  two  toads  encysted 
Within  one  stone. 
Two  vipers  twisted 
Into  one. 

"Here  is  the  poem: 

"Fair  flowers  pass  away : 
In  perfumed  ruin  falls  the  lily's  urn; 
In  pallid  pink  decay 

Moulders  the  rose; — all  in  their  time  return 
To  the  primeval  clay. 

"Yet  still  their  tiny  ghosts 
Hover  about  our  homes  on  viewless  wings; 
In  incense-breathing  hosts 

They  love  to  haunt  those  stores  of  trifling  things 
Of  which  affeclion  boasts, — 

"  Some  curl  of  glossy  hair, — 
Some  loving  letter  penned  by  pretty  fingers, — 
Some  volume  old  and  rare, 
On  whose  time-yellow  fly-leaf  fondly  lingers 
The  name  of  a  woman  fair. 

"So  in  that  hour 
When  brave  lives  fail  and  brave  hearts  cease  to 

beat, — 
Each  deed  of  power 


Letters  from  The  Raven       63 

Lives  on  to  haunt  our  memories^ — faintly  sweet 
Like  the  ghost  of  a  flower. 

"Each  flower  we  strew 
In  tribute  to  the  brave  to-day  shall  prove 
A  token  true 

Of  some  sweet  memory  of  the  dead  we  love, — 
The  Men  in  Blue. 

"Perchance  the  story 

Of  Chalmette^s  heroes  may  be  lost  to  fame , 
As  years  wax  hoary ; 

But  Valor's  Angel  keeps  each  gallant  name 
On  his  Roll  of  Glory:' 

August  14,  1878,  Hearn  wrote  a  letter  to  the 
man  who  had  always  cheered  him  and  who  now 
in  turn  needed  cheering.  Business  in  all  lines  in 
Cincinnati  was  bad,  and  Mr.  Watkin  was  quite 
despondent.  He  had  written  Hearn  something 
of  this,  and  also  had  hinted  that  he  might  move 
to  Kansas  or  somewhere  farther  West.  In  return 
he  received  the  following  letter,  expressive  of  all 
that  was  most  fun-loving  in  its  writer: 

"  MY  DEAR  OLD  MAN  :  I  think  you  had  better 
come  here  next  October  and  rejoin  your  naughty 
raven.  It  would  not  do  you  any  harm  to  recon 
noitre.  Think  of  the  times  we  could  have, —  de- 


64       Letters  from  The  Raven 

lightful  rooms  with  five  large  windows  opening 
on  piazzas  shaded  by  banana  trees;  dining  at 
Chinese  restaurants  and  being  served  by  Manila 
waitresses,  with  oblique  eyes  and  skin  like  gold; 
visiting  sugar-cane  plantations ;  scudding  over  to 
Cuba;  dying  with  the  mere  delight  of  laziness; 
laughing  at  cold  and  smiling  at  the  news  of  snow 
storms  a  thousand  miles  away;  eating  the  cheap 
est  food  in  the  world, — and  sinning  the  sweetest 
kind  of  sins.  Now  you  know,  good  old  Dad, 
nice  old  Dad, — you  know  that  you  are  lazy  and 
ought  to  be  still  lazier.  Come  here  and  be  lazy. 
Let  me  be  the  siren  voice  enticing  a  Ulysses 
who  does  not  stuff  wax  in  his  ears.  Don't  go  to 
horrid,  dreadful  Kansas.  Go  to  some  outrageous 
ruinous  land,  where  the  moons  are  ten  times 
larger  than  they  are  there.  Or  tell  me  to  pull  up 
stakes,  and  I  shall  take  unto  myself  the  wings  of 
a  bird  and  fly  to  any  place  but  beastly  Cincinnati. 
"  Money  can  be  made  here  out  of  the  poor. 
People  are  so  poor  here  that  nothing  pays  ex 
cept  that  which  appeals  to  poverty.  But  I  think 
you  could  make  things  hop  around  lively.  Now 
one  can  make  thirty  milk  biscuits  for  five  cents 
and  eight  cups  of  coffee  for  five  cents.  Just  think 
of  it!. 


Letters  from  The  Raven       65 

"Cincinnati  is  bad;  but  it's  going  to  be  a  d — d 
sight  worse.  You  know  that  as  well  as  I  do. 
Leave  the  vile  hole  and  the  long  catalogue  of 
Horrid  Acquaintances  behind  you,  and  come 
down  here  to  your  own  little  man, — good  little 
man.  Get  you  nice  room,  nice  board,  nice  busi 
ness.  Perhaps  we  might  strike  ile  in  a  glorious 
spec.  Why  don't  you  spec.?  You'd  better  spec, 
pretty  soon,  or  the  times  will  get  so  bad  that  you 
will  have  to  get  up  and  dust.  This  is  a  seaport. 
There  are  tall  ships  here.  They  sail  to  Europe, — 
to  London,  Marseilles,  Constantinople,  Smyrna. 
They  sail  to  the  West  Indies  and  those  seaports 
where  we  are  going  to  open  a  cigar  store  or  some 
thing  of  that  kind. 

O/;,  /  have  seven  tall  ships  at  seay 
And  seven  more  at  hand; 
And  five  and  twenty  jolly ',  jolly  seamen 
Shall  be  at  your  command. 

May  the  Immortal  Gods  preserve  you  in  im 
mortal  youth." 

There  now  follow  some  letters  whose  dates 
it  has  been  impossible  to  fix.  The  cancellation 
marks  on  the  envelopes  give  the  months,  but 
not  the  years.  However,  there  is  internal  evi- 


66       Letters  from  The  Raven 

dence  to  show  that  they  belong  to  the  period 
between  the  last  group  and  the  group  of  1882, 
so  that  they  were  written  in  the  years  1 879,  1 8  80, 
and  1 88 1,  in  all  probability.  The  first  is  one 
of  the  most  interesting  letters  in  the  whole  set. 
The  future  great  writer  is  displayed  as  the  owner 
of  a  five-cent  eating-house.  The  letter  is  replete 
with  ridiculous  little  sketches  of  a  bird,  which 
he  claimed  was  a  raven.  In  facl,  in  the  following, 
wherever  "raven"  is  used,  the  reader  must  un 
derstand  that  there  is  a  drawing  of  one  in  the 
letter.  It  was  written  in  February: 

"  MY  DEAR  O.  M. :  Your  style  of  correspond 
ence —  four  letters  a  year — leads  me  to  suppose 
that  the  fate  of  the  Raven  is  of  little  conse 
quence.  It  was  therefore  with  surprise  that  I 
heard  of  a  letter  concerning  It  being  received 
at  the  Item  office.  The  letter  warranted  the  as 
sumption  that  you  had  at  least  some  curiosity,  if 
nothing  better,  in  regard  to  It.  That  curiosity 
should  be  gratified.  The  Raven  keepeth  a  restau 
rant  in  the  city  of  New  Orleans.  It  is  secretly  in 
business  for  itself.  It  is  also  in  the  newspaper 
business.  The  reason  It  has  gone  into  business 
for  itself  is  that  It  is  tired  of  working  for  other 


Letters  from  The  Raven        67 

people.  The  reason  that  It  is  still  in  the  news 
paper  line  is  that  the  business  is  not  yet  paying, 
and  needs  some  financial  support.  The  business 

is  the  cheapest  in  N.  O.  All  dishes  are  five  cents. 
r 

Knocks  the  market  price  out  of  things.  The 
business  has  already  cost  about  one  hundred 
dollars  to  set  up.  May  pay  well;  may  not.  The 
Raven  has  apartner, —  a  large  and  ferocious  man, 
who  kills  people  that  disagree  with  their  coffee. 
The  Raven  expects  to  settle  in  Cuba  before  long. 
Is  going  there  to  reconnoitre  in  a  few  months, — 
if  Fortune  smileth.  It  has  mastered  the  elements 
of  Spanish  language,  and  has  a  Spanish  tutor 
who  comes  every  day  to  teach  It.  It  has  been 
studying  Spanish  assiduously  for  six  mos.;  and 
trusts  to  be  able  to  establish  a  meson  de  los  es- 
tr  anger  os,  or  stranger's  restaurant,  in  Havana, — 
unless  It  is  busted  up  pretty  soon.  It  might  be 
busted  up.  As  yet  It  has  remained  poor.  Eco 
nomy  is  the  cause  thereof.  It  has  seen  little  of 
wine  and  women  in  this  city.  Its  notions  are 
mean  and  stingy.  It  is  constantly  suspicious  that 
Its  partner  may  go  back  on  It.  It  is  of  a  sus 
picious  character.  It  has  debts  on  its  mind,  but 
prefers  to  look  after  its  own  interests  at  pre 
sent, — until  It  can  buy  some  clothes.  It  also 


68       Letters  from  The  Raven 

proposes  to  establish  another  five-cent  eating- 
house  here  in  the  French  quarter,  sooner  or 
later,  if  this  one  pays.  If  the  O.  M.  ever  leaves 
Cincinnati,  he  may  see  the  Raven.  Otherwise 
he  will  not.  If  he  comes  to  this  part  of  the  world, 
he  can  obtain  board  cheap  at  the  five-cent  re 
staurant.  The  Raven  would  not  object  to  see  him 
again, —  on  the  contrary,  he  is  filled  with  CURI 
OSITY  to  see  him.  The  Raven  may  succeed  right 
ofF.  He  may  not.  But  he  is  going  to  succeed 
sooner  or  later,  even  if  he  has  to  start  an  eating- 
house  in  Hell.  He  sends  you  his  respects, —  re 
serving  his  affection  for  a  later  time." 

Hearn  enclosed  with  the  latter  a  yellow  hand 
bill  advertising  his  restaurant.  It  was  as  follows: 

"The  5  cent  Restaurant 
1 60  Dryades  Street 

This  is  the  cheapest  eating-house  in  the  South.  It  is  neat, 
orderly,  and  respectable  as  any  other  in  New  Orleans.  You 
can  get  a  good  meal  for  a  couple  of  nickels.  All  dishes  5 
cents.  A  large  cup  of  pure  Coffee^  with  Rolls,  only  5  cents. 
Everything  half  the  price  of  the  markets." 

In  a  letter  postmarked  June  27,  he  again  refers 
to  his  knowledge  of  Spanish,  and,  what  is  more 
interesting,  makes  his  first  reference  to  Japan,  the 


Letters  from  The  Raven       69 

country  where  he  was  to  achieve  his  best  work: 

"Your  little  Raven  talks  Spanish.  Has  a  fair 
acquaintance  with  the  language.  Just  now  rusty 
for  want  of  practice.  Soon  pick  it  up  again.  .  .  . 

"Have  also  wild  theories  regarding  Japan. 

Splendid  field  in  Japan Climate  just  like 

England,  —  perhaps  a  little  milder.  Plenty  of 
Europeans.  English,  American  and  French  pa 
pers.  .  .  . 

"Would  not  be  surprised  if  you  could  make 
N.  Orleans  trip  pay  —  now  that  I  have  seen  your 
circulars.  Only  —  remember C.O.  D.  Everybody 
here  is  a  thief.  Must  be  careful  even  in  changing 
a  quarter  not  to  get  counterfeits  or  false  change. 
Horrid  den  of  villains,  robbers,  mutual  admira 
tion, —  political  quacks,  medical  quacks,  literary 
quacks, — adventurers,  Spanish,  Italian,  Greek, 
English,  Corsican,  French,  Venezuelan, —  Pari 
sian  roues,  Sicilian  murderers,  Irish  ruffians.  .  .  . 
Couldn't  be  half  so  bad  in  Japan." 

The  censure  of  New  Orleans  people  must  not 
be  taken  too  seriously.  He  afterwards  had  some 
very  dear  friends  there,  who  changed  his  opinions 
to  a  great  extent.  On  November  24  came  a  letter 
liberally  sprinkled  with  drawings  of  the  raven 
and  replete  with  his  fun: 


70       Letters  from  The  Raven 

"DEAR  OLD  MAN:  The  Raven  has  not  found 
letter-writing  a  pleasant  occupation  lately.  It  has 
had  some  trouble ;  It  has  also  been  studying  very 
hard;  It  has  had  Its  literary  work  doubled,  and  It 
has  had  little  leisure  time,  as  Its  grotesque  and 
fantastic  Eye  is  not  yet  in  a  healthy  condition. 
It  cannot  write  at  night,  not  in  these  beautiful 
Southern  Nights,  which  flame  with  stars,  —  the 
'holy  Night,'  as  the  old  Greek  poet  called  it, 
which  is  'all  Eye,  all  Ear,  all  perfume  to  the  stu 
dent.' 

"The  Raven  would  like  to  see  you,  as  It  could 
tell  you  a  great  many  queer  things  about  South 
ern  matters,  which  no  paper  has  published  or 
dare  publish,  and  about  the  city  and  about  the 
people.  But  It  hardly  hopes  to  see  you;  for  after 
this  summer  It  will  not  be  here.  It  has  latterly 
heard  much  of  advantages  held  out  to  It  in  Mex 
ico  City,  where  the  great  exposition  is  soon  to 
be  held;  and  Its  Spanish  studies  have  been  suc 
cessful.  Itwants  to  find  a  temporary  resting-place 
among  Spanish  people,  and  cannot  stay  here.  It 
would  be  pleased  to  forget  Its  own  language  for 
a  while,  whether  in  Cuba  or  elsewhere.  .  .  .  The 
Raven  cannot  go  North,  as  It  cannot  afford  to. 
It  will  require  all  It  can  save  to  carry  It  through 


%^^ 


C^v 


Letters  from  The  Raven       71 

troubles  which  await  It  somewhere  else, — for 
thou  knowest  full  well  that  Woe  is  the  normal 
condition  of  the  Raven's  existence.  The  Raven 
passeth  Its  time  thusly:  In  the  morning  It  aris- 
eth  with  the  Sun  and  drinketh  a  cup  of  coffee 
and  devoureth  a  piece  of  bread.  Then  It  proceed- 
eth  to  the  office  and  concocteth  devilment  for  the 
Item.  Then  It  returneth  to  Its  room,  whose  win 
dows  are  shadowed  by  creeping  plants  and  clouds 
of  mosquitoes,  and  receiveth  Its  Spanish  tutor. 
Then  It  goeth  to  a  Chinese  restaurant,  where  It 
eateth  an  amazing  dinner, — Its  bump  of  ALIMEN- 
TATIVENESS  being  enormously  developed.  Then 
It  spendeth  two  hours  among  the  second-hand 
bookstores.  It  then  goeth  to  bed, —  to  arise  in 
the  dead  vast  and  middle  of  the  night  and  smoke 
Its  pipe.  For  a  year  It  hath  not  smoked  a  cigar; 
and  Its  morals  are  exemplary.  It  sendeth  you  Its 
affectionate  good-will  and  proceedeth  forthwith 
to  smoke  Its  pipe." 

Again,  without  any  clue  as  to  its  date  and  with 
out  any  aid  from  the  memory  of  Mr.  Watkin, 
is  a  small  photograph  of  the  writer,  with  this 
characteristic  note: 

"DEAR  OLD  DAD:  Would  like  to  hear  from 


72        Letters  from  The  Raven 

you,  to  see  you,  to  chat  with  you.  Write  me  a 
line  or  two.  As  soon  as  I  can  find  time,  will 
write  a  nice,  long,  chatty  letter,  —  all  about  every 
thing  you  would  like  to  hear.  Am  doing  well. 
New  Orleans  is  not,  however,  what  I  hoped  it 
was.  Are  you  well  and  happy  ?  I  have  thoughts 
of  cemeteries  and  graves,  and  a  dear  old  Ghost 
with  a  white  beard,  —  a  Voice  of  the  Past. 
"  I  press  your  hand. 

"  LAFCADIO  HEARN" 

In  a  letter  dated  July  7,  1882,  Hearn  tells  of 
his  first  adventures  in  the  book-writing  line  and 
of  the  horrified  criticisms  of  some  of  the  East 
ern  book-reviewers.  All  told,  however,  he  be 
comes  the  more  purposeful  Hearn,  the  man  Mr. 
Watkin  had  always  predicted  he  would  be  if  he 
continued  at  his  literary  work  in  his  own  way. 
It  is  interesting  for  another  reason,  too,  in  that 
it  shows  how  already,  in  these  New  Orleans  days, 
Hearn  was  preparing  himself  by  his  studies  for 
his  future  life  in  Japan. 

"  MY  DEAR  OLD  DAD  :  Your  letter  lies  before 
me  here  like  a  white  tablet  of  stone  bearing  a 
dead  name;  and  in  my  mind  there  is  just  such 
a  silence  as  one  feels  standing  before  a  tomb, — 


r    f 
1      ' 


Letters  from  The  Raven        73 

so  that  I  can  press  your  hand  only  and  say  no 
thing. 


A  FANCIFUL  PENCIL  SKETCH   BY  HEARN 

"  I  must  go  North  in  a  few  months,  by  way 
of  Cincinnati,  and  spend  a  week  or  so  in  the  city. 


74       Letters  from  The  Raven 

My  intention  is  to  see  Worthington  about  a  new 
publication.  He  is  now  in  Europe.  Here  I  make 
thirty  dollars  a  week  for  about  five  hours'  work 
a  day,  and  the  position  appears  tolerably  solid; 
but  the  climate  is  enervating,  the  man  who  re 
fuses  to  connect  himself  with  church  or  clique 
lives  alone  like  a  hermit  in  the  Thebaids,  and 
one  sickens  of  such  a  life  at  times.  Sometimes 
I  fancy  that  the  older  I  grow,  the  more  distaste 
ful  companionship  becomes;  but  this  may  be  ow 
ing  to  the  situation  here.  Nevertheless  I  am  feel 
ing  very  old,  old  almost  as  the  Tartar  of  Long 
fellow's  poem, — *  three  hundred  and  sixty  years.' 
"Imagine  the  heavy,  rancid  air  of  a  Southern 
swamp  in  midsummer,  when  the  very  clouds 
seem  like  those  which  belonged  to  the  atmo 
sphere  of  pregeologic  periods, uncreated  lead  and 
iron, —  never  a  breath  of  pure  air, —  dust  that  is 
powdered  dung, — quaking  ground  that  shakes 
with  the  passage  of  a  wagon,  —  heat  as  of  a  per 
petual  vapor  bath,  —  and  at  night,  subtle  damps 
that  fill  the  bones  with  rheumatism  and  poison 
the  blood.  Then,  when  one  thinks  of  green  hills 
and  brisk  winds,  comes  a  strange  despondency. 
It  is  something  like  the  outlying  region  through 
which  Milton's  Lucifer  passed,  half  crawling, 


Letters  from  The  Raven       75 

half  flying,  on  his  way  to  the  Garden  of  Eden. 
Your  little  reprints  provoked  very  pleasant  old 
memories.  I  paid  the  Somebody  one  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars  for  the  publication. *  Have  not 
yet  heard  from  him.  The  understanding  is  that  I 
get  my  money  back  and  something  besides.  How 
ever,  I  shall  be  satisfied  with  the  something.  I 
have  had  many  nice  notices,  letters  from  authors 
of  some  note,  and  a  few  criticisms  of  the  true 
Pharisaic  species.  I  enclose  one  for  your  amuse 
ment.  I  have  also  built  up  a  fine  library,  about 
three  hundred  picked  volumes,  and  have  a  little 
money  saved.  Have  also  some  ambition  to  try 
the  book  business, — not  here,  but  in  San  Fran 
cisco  or  somewhere  else.  However,  I  have  no  de 
finite  plans, — only  a  purpose  to  do  something 
for  myself  and  thus  obtain  leisure  for  a  syste 
matic  literary  purpose.  Were  you  situated  like 
me, — that  is,  having  no  large  business  or  large 
interests, —  I  think  I  should  try  to  coax  you  to 
seek  the  El  Dorado  of  the  future,  where  for 
tunes  will  certainly  be  made  by  practical  men, — 
Mexico, — where  no  one  ever  lights  a  fire,  and 
where  one  has  only  to  go  in  the  sun  when  he  is 
too  cold,  into  the  shade  when  he  is  too  warm. 
*  Translation  of  Gautier's  short  stories. 


76        Letters  from  The  Raven 

But  for  the  present  I  will  only  ask  you  to  come 
down  here  when  the  weather  gets  healthy  and 
your  business  will  allow  it.  You  will  stay  with  me, 
of  course,  and  no  expense.  The  trip  would  be 
agreeable  in  the  season  when  the  air  is  sweet 
with  orange  blossoms. 

"The  population  here  is  exceedingly  queer, — 
something  it  is  hard  to  describe,  and  something 
which  it  is  possible  to  learn  only  after  a  painful 
experience  of  years.  At  present  I  may  say  that 
all  my  acquaintances  here  are  limited  to  about 
half  a  dozen,  with  one  or  two  friends  whom  I  in 
vite  to  see  me  occasionally.  Yet  almost  daily  I 
receive  letters  from  people  I  do  not  know,  ask 
ing  favors  which  I  never  grant.  New  Orleans  is 
the  best  school  for  the  study  of  human  selfish 
ness  I  have  ever  been  in.  Buddhism  teaches  that 
the  second  birth  is  to  this  life  cas  the  echo  to  the 
voice  in  the  cavern,  as  the  great  footprints  to 
the  steps  of  the  elephant.' According  to  the  teach 
ing  of  the  Oriental  Christ,  this  whole  population 
will  be  born  again  as  wild  beasts, — which  is  con 
soling.  .  .  .  You  say  you  cannot  write.  I  differ 
with  you;  but  it  would  certainly  be  impossible 
for  either  of  us  to  write  many  things  we  would 
like  to  say.  Still,  you  can  easily  drop  a  line  from 


Letters  from  The  Raven       77 

time  to  time,  even  a  postal  card,  just  to  let  me 
know  you  are  well.  If  I  do  not  get  up  to  see  you 
by  September,  I  hope  to  see  you  down.  I  dreamed 
one  night  that  I  heard  the  ticking  of  the  queer 
clock, — like  the  longstrides  of  a  man  booted  and 
spurred.  You  know  the  clock  I  mean, — the  long, 
weird-faced  clock.  My  eyes  are  notwell, of  course, 
—  never  will  be ;  but  they  are  better.  More  about 
myself  I  cannot  tell  you  in  a  letter, — except 
that  I  suppose  I  have  changed  a  little.  Less  de 
spondent,  but  less  hopeful ;  wiser  a  little  and 
more  silent;  less  nervous,  but  less  merry;  more 
systematic  and  perhaps  a  good  deal  more  selfish. 
Not  strictly  economical,  but  coming  to  it  stead 
ily;  and  in  leisure  hours  studying  the  theories  of 
the  East,  the  poetry  of  antique  India,  the  teach 
ings  of  the  wise  concerning  absorption  and  ema 
nation,  the  illusions  of  existence,  and  happiness 
as  the  equivalent  of  annihilation.  Think  they  were 
wiser  than  the  wisest  of  Occidental  ecclesiastics. 
"And  still  there  is  in  life  much  sweetness  and 
much  pleasure  in  the  accomplishment  of  a  fixed 
purpose.  Existence  may  be  a  delusion  and  de 
sire  a  snare,  but  I  expect  to  exist  long  enough 
to  satisfy  my  desire  to  see  thee  again  before  en 
tering  Nirvana.  So,  reaching  to  thee  the  grasp 


78        Letters  from  The  Raven 

of  friendship  across  the  distance  of  a  thousand 
miles,  I  remain  in  the  hope  of  being  always  re 
membered  sincerely  as  your  friend." 

On  September  10, 1 882,inreply  to  a  letterfrom 
Mr.  Watkin,  in  which  the  latter  said  he  thought 
of  going  to  Tampa  for  a  rest  and  possibly  also 
to  look  around  and  see  what  the  business  pro 
spects  were,  Hearn  filled  five  big  sheets  with  all 
the  information  he  could  gather  about  Tampa, 
from  facts  about  fleas  to  a  glowing  eulogy  of  the 
moon,  —  "seven  times  larger  than  your  cold 
moon." 

Following  upon  his  translations  of  Gautier, 
Hearn  busied  himself  with  translations  from  Flau 
bert,  and  sent  the  manuscript  of  the  proposed 
title-page  and  introduction  to  Mr.  Watkin  to  set 
up,  as  he  was  superstitious  about  his  "Dear  Old 
Dad"  bringing  him  luck.  As  usual  he  urged  his 
friend  to  visit  him,  drawing  in  a  letter  of  Septem 
ber  14,  1882,  the  following  alluring  pictures: 

"In  October  we  shall  have  exquisite  weather 
—  St.  Martin's  summer,  the  Creoles  call  it, — 
something  like  Indian  summer  North.  Then  I 
shall  indeed  hope  to  see  you.  No  danger  now  of 
fever;  and  will  have  a  nice  healthy  room  for  you. 


Letters  from  The  Raven        79 

If  you  can't  get  away  in  October,  wait  till  No 
vember, —  nice  and  clear  month  generally,  with 
orange-blossom  smells.  Raven  wants  to  have  a 
big  talk.  As  for  writing,  don't  write  if  it  bothers 
you.  I  am  sure  you  cannot  have  much  time  and 
must  take  care  of  your  eyes.  Perhaps  some  day  we 
can  both  take  things  more  easily,  and  a  long  rest 
by  running  streams,  near  mountain  winds  and  in 
a  climate  like  unto  an  eternal  mountain  spring 
time.  Dream  of  voices  of  birds,  whisper  of  leaves, 
milky  quivering  of  stars,  laughing  of  streams, 
odors  of  pine  and  of  savage  flowers,  shadows 
of  flying  clouds,  winds  triumphantly  free.  Horri 
ble  cities!  vile  air!  abominable  noises!  sickness! 
humdrum  human  machines!  Let  us  strike  our 
tents!  move  a  little  nearer  to  Nature!" 

October  26,1882,  still  writing  about  the  pro 
mised  visit  of  Mr.  Watkin,  he  sent  the  following : 

"My  DEAR  OLD  MAN:  As  the  twig  is  bent, 
&c.  —  neither  you  nor  I  can  now  correct  our 
selves  of  habits.  We  are  both  old.  [Hearn  was 
thirty-two  and  Mr.  Watkin  fifty-nine.]  I,  for  my 
part,  feel  ancient  as  the  moon,  and  regret  the  de 
parture  of  my  youth.  But  I  observe  that  all  my 
best  friends  have  the  same  habit.  There 's  Charley 


8o        Letters  from  The  Raven 

Johnson, —  wrote  me  twice  in  five  years.  There's 
the  old  newspaper  coteries  never  write  me  at  all. 
There  is  myself,  just  as  bad  as  anybody. When 
somebody  asked  Theophile  Gautier  to  write,  he 
answered,  cOh,  ask  a  carpenter  to  plane  planks 

just  for  fun!'  It  is  a  fact.  Life's  too  short I 

was  afraid  for  a  while  that  Yellow  Jack  was  try 
ing  to  climb  up  this  way  from  Pensacola;  but  I 
think  all  danger  is  now  over.  The  weather  feels 
chilly  to  us, —  alligator-blooded  and  web-footed 
dwellers  of  the  swamp  (the  Dismal  Swamp) :  it 
will  feel  warm  to  you. . . . 

"Yes;  I  think  a  river  trip  down  would  be  nicer 
for  you,  as  it  would  include  rest,  good  living, 
and  a  certain  magical  illusion  of  Southern  beau 
ties  which  bewitched  me  into  making  my  dwell 
ing-place  among  the  frogs  and  bugs  and  the 
everlasting  mosquitoes.  'Bugs'  here  mean  every 
flying  and  crawling  thing  whereof  the  entomo 
logy  is  unknown  to  the  people.  The  electric  lights 
nightly  murder  centillions  of  them." 

The  letter  is  signed  as  usual  with  the  drawing 
of  a  raven.  As  a  novelty,  the  bird  is  looking  at 
a  steamer  bearing  over  the  side-wheel  the  name 
Watkin. 


Letters  from  The  Raven       81 

November  24, 1 8 8 2,  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Watkin, 
foreshadowing  the  book,  "Stray  Leaves  from 
Strange  Literatures/'  which  was  to  bring  him  his 
first  meed  of  praise  from  all  sides.  Again  in  this 
letter  he  somewhat  despondently  referred  to  his 
being  a  small  man  in  a  world  where,  according 
to  his  morbid  views,  big  men  won  all  the  battles: 

"I'm  busy  on  a  collection  of  Oriental  legends, 
—  Brahmanic,  Buddhistic,  Talmudic,  Arabic, 
Chinese,  and  Polynesian, — which  I  hope  to  have 
ready  in  the  spring.  I  think  I  can  get  Scribner  or 
Osgood  to  bring  it  out. 

"I  think  myself  that  life  is  worth  living  un 
der  the  conditions  you  speak  of;  but  they  are 
very  hard  to  obtain.  I  would  be  glad  to  try  a 
new  climate, —  a  new  climate  is  a  new  life,  a  new 
youth.  Here  the  problem  of  existence  forever 
stares  one  in  the  face  with  eyes  of  iron.  Inde 
pendence  is  so  hard  to  obtain, —  the  churches,  the 
societies, the  organizations,  the  cliques,  the  hum 
bugs  are  all  working  against  the  man  who  tries 
to  preserve  independence  of  thought  and  action. 
Outside  of  these  one  cannot  obtain  a  woman's 
society,  and  if  obtained  one  is  forever  buried 
in  the  mediocrity  to  which  she  belongs. . . .  My 
idea  of  perfect  bliss  would  be  ease  and  absolute 


82       Letters  from  The  Raven 

quiet, — silence, dreams,  tepidness, — great  quaint 
rooms  overlooking  a  street  full  of  shadows  and 
emptiness, —  friends  in  the  evening,  a  pipe,  a  lit 
tle  philosophy,  wandering  under  the  moon. . . . 
I  am  beginning  to  imagine  that  to  be  forever  in 
the  company  of  one  woman  would  kill  a  man 
with  ennui.  And  I  feel  that  I  am  getting  old  — 
immemorially  old, —  older  than  the  moon.  I 
ought  never  to  have  been  born  in  this  century, 
I  think  sometimes,  because  I  live  forever  in 
dreams  of  other  centuries  and  other  faiths  and 
other  ethics, —  dreams  rudely  broken  by  the 
sound  of  cursing  in  the  street  below,  cursing  in 
seven  different  languages.  I  can't  tell  you  much 
else  about  myself.  I  live  in  my  books,  and  the 
smoke  of  my  pipe,  and  ideas  that  nobody  has  any 
right  expecting  a  good  time  in  this  world  unless 
he  be  gifted  with  great  physical  strength  and  force 
of  will.  These  give  success.  Little  phantoms  of 
men  are  blown  about  like  down  in  the  storms  of 
the  human  struggle :  they  have  not  enough  weight 
to  keep  them  in  place.  And  the  Talmud  says: 
'There  are  three  whose  life  is  no  life:  the  Sym 
pathetic  man,  the  Irascible,  and  the  Melan 
choly.'  But  alas!  the  art  by  which  the  Sorceress 
of  Colchis  could  recreate  a  body  by  cutting  it  up 


Letters  from  The  Raven        83 

and  boiling  it  in  a  pot  is  lost.  Don't  you  think 
happiness  is  solely  the  result  of  perfect  health 
under  normal  conditions  of  existence?  I  believe 
in  the  German  philosopher  who  said  that  whether 
one  had  a  billion  dollars  a  day  or  only  one  dol 
lar  a  week,  it  made  no  difference  in  regard  to  the 
amount  of  happiness  a  human  brain  was  suscep 
tible  of.  Still,  it  would  be  so  nice  to  avoid  the  op 
posite  by  walling  oneself  up  from  the  human  spe 
cies, — like  theCainites,  whose  cities  were f  walled 
up  to  Heaven."1 

There  now  ensues  in  the  correspondence,  a  si 
lence  extending  over  a  period  of  nearly  five  years. 
These  were  busy  years  for  Hearn.  His  position 
in  the  New  Orleans  newspaper  world  became  a 
prominent  one,  and  his  translations  of  stories 
from  the  French,  made  for  the  papers  by  which 
he  was  employed,  were  so  favorably  received  as  to 
give  him  greater  confidence  in  his  own  abilities. 

Early  in  June  of  the  year  1887  things  began 
to  take  a  turn  for  greater  work  for  Hearn.  His 
studies  of  the  negroes  and  the  Creoles  of  Lou 
isiana  had  attracted  the  attention  of  the  publish 
ers,  and  he  had  received  some  rather  tempting 
offers  to  do  work  for  them.  It  was  then  that  he 
left  New  Orleans,  going  to  New  York  by  way  of 


84        Letters  from  The  Raven 

Cincinnati.  With  all  of  his  old  shyness,  his  avoid 
ance  of  mere  acquaintances,  and  his  love  of  the 
white-haired  old  gentleman,  who  alone  in  Cincin 
nati  had  understood  him,  Hearn  spent  his  entire 
day  in  Cincinnati  in  chat  at  Watkin's  printing 
office,  which  was  then  situated  at  26  Longworth 
Street.  It  was  there  that  Hearn  saw  once  more 
the  tall  clock,  whose  peculiar  ticking  seemed  to 
have  fascinated  him  and  to  which  references  are 
made  even  in  his  few  letters  from  Japan.  After 
the  day  with  Mr.  Watkin,  he  went  direct  to  New 
York,  where  he  was  the  guest  of  his  friend,  Mr. 
H.  E.  Krehbiel,  the  well-known  musical  critic, 
who  was  then  living  at  438  West  57th  Street. 
From  there  it  was  that  Hearn  wrote  to  his  men 
tor  the  following  confession  of  affection  and  gra 
titude: 

"DEAR  OLD  MAN:  A  delightful  trip  brought 
me  safe  and  sound  to  New  York,  where  my  dear 
friend  Krehbiel  was  waiting  to  take  me  to  his 
cosy  home.  I  cannot  tell  you  how  much  our  lit 
tle  meeting  delighted  me,  or  how  much  I  re 
gretted  to  depart  so  soon,  or  how  differently  I 
regarded  our  old  friendship  from  my  old  way 
of  looking  at  it.  I  was  too  young,  too  foolish, 


Letters  from  The  Raven       85 

and  too  selfish  to  know  you  as  you  are,  when  we 
used  to  be  together.  Ten  years  made  little  ex 
terior  change  in  me,  but  a  great  deal  of  heart- 
change;  and  I  saw  you  as  you  are, — noble  and 
true  and  frank  and  generous,  and  felt  I  loved  you 
more  than  I  ever  did  before;  felt  also  how  much 
I  owed  you,  and  will  always  owe  you, —  and  un 
derstood  how  much  allowance  you  had  made  for 
all  my  horrid,  foolish  ways  when  I  used  to  be 
with  you.  Well,  I  am  sure  to  see  you  again.  I 
am  having  one  of  the  most  delightful  holidays 
here  I  ever  had  in  my  life;  and  I  expecl  to  stay 
a  few  weeks.  If  it  were  not  for  the  terrible  win 
ters,  I  should  like  to  live  in  New  York.  Some 
day  I  suppose  I  shall  have  to  spend  a  good  deal 
of  my  time  here.  The  houses  eleven  stories  high, 
that  seem  trying  to  climb  into  the  moon, —  the 
tremendous  streets  and  roads, —  the  cascading 
thunder  of  the  awful  torrent  of  life, —  the  sense 
of  wealth-force  and  mind-power  that  oppresses 
the  stranger  here, —  all  these  form  so  colossal 
a  contrast  with  the  inert  and  warmly  colored 
Southern  life  that  I  know  not  how  to  express  my 
impression.  I  can  only  think  that  I  have  found 
superb  material  for  a  future  story,  in  which  the 
influence  of  New  York  on  a  Southern  mind  may 


86        Letters  from  The  Raven 

be  described.  Well,  new  as  these  things  may 
seem  to  me,  they  are,  no  doubt,  old  and  uninter 
esting  to  you, — so  that  I  shall  not  bore  you  with 
my  impressions.  I  will  look  forward  to  our  next 
meeting,  when  during  a  longer  stay  in  Cin.  I  can 
tell  you  such  little  experiences  of  my  trip  as  may 
please  you.  I  want  to  get  into  that  dear  little  shop 
of  yours  again.  I  dreamed  of  it  the  other  night, 
and  heard  the  tickingof  the  oldclock  like  a  man's 
feet  treading  on  pavement  far  away;  and  I  saw 
the  Sphinx,  with  the  mother  and  child  in  her 
arms,  move  her  monstrous  head,  and  observe: 
cThe  sky  in  New  York  is  grey!' 

"When  I  woke  up  it  was  grey,  and  it  re 
mained  grey  until  to-day.  Even  now  it  is  not 
like  our  summer  blue.  It  looks  higher  and  paler 
and  colder.  We  are  nearer  to  God  in  the  South, 
just  as  we  are  nearer  to  Death  in  that  terrible 
and  splendid  heat  of  the  Gulf  Coast.  When  I 
write  God,  of  course  I  mean  only  the  World- 
Soul,  the  mighty  and  sweetest  life  of  Nature, 
the  great  Blue  Ghost,  the  Holy  Ghost  which 
fills  planets  and  hearts  with  beauty. 
"Believe  me,  Dear  Old  Dad, 

"Affectionately,  your  son, 

"LAFCADIO  HEARN  " 


Letters  from  The  Raven        87 

Below  this  is  once  more  the  familiar  drawing 
of  the  raven. 

From  this  time  on  the  letters  came  at  greater 
and  greater  intervals.  There  were  only  three 
more  from  America  and  then  four  from  Japan. 
It  was  not  that  Hearn  forgot  his  old  friend  or 
cared  less  for  him.  But  he  became  busier,  and 
with  larger  projects,  newer  aims,  and  a  different 
life,  there  was  less  time  in  which  to  indulge  him 
self  in  the  adive  correspondence  of  former  years. 
Between  the  New  York  group  of  letters  and 
those  from  Japan  is  a  gap.  Letters  on  both  sides 
had  become  a  matter  of  years  instead  of  weeks 
or  months.  Mr.  Watkin,  with  the  increasing 
weight  of  years  on  his  shoulders  and  the  increas 
ing  cares  of  a  business  that  had  begun  to  decline 
with  the  introduction  of  modern  printing  me 
thods,  found  less  time  to  write  to  his  Raven. 

Early  in  July,  1887,  Hearn  at  last  departed 
on  that  long-wished- for  journey  to  the  West  In 
dies.  A  note,  hastily  scribbled  to  Mr.  Watkin, 
told  of  the  arrangements: 

"DEAR  OLD  MAN:  I  leave  on  the  Barracouta 
for  Trinidad,  Sunday,  at  daybreak.  I  have  been 
travelling  about  a  good  deal,  and  have  been  si- 


88        Letters  from  The  Raven 

lent  only  because  so  busy  and  so  tired  when  the 
business  was  over.  Your  dear  letter  and  your  ex 
cellent  little  stamp  both  delighted  me.  I  will  let 
you  hear  from  me  soon  again, —  that  is,  as  soon 
as  I  can  get  to  a  P.  O. 

"With  affeclion,  always  your  little  Raven, 

"LAFCADIO  HEARN" 

This  promise  of  frequent  letters  was  one  he  was 
not  destined  to  keep.  Once  in  the  West  Indies, 
he  found  himself  so  enthralled  by  its  beauties, 
so  busy  putting  on  paper  his  impressions  of  what 
he  was  seeing  and  breathing  and  feeling,  that  it 
was  not  until  he  was  once  more  in  the  United 
States  that  he  found  time  to  write. 

September  21,  1887,  he  sent  the  following 
from  Metuchen,  New  Jersey: 

"DEAR  OLD  DAD:  After  three  months  or  so 
in  the  West  Indies  and  British  Guiana,  I  am 
back  again  in  the  U.  S.  in  first-rate  health  and 
spirits.  I  ought  to  have  been  able  to  write  you, 
I  thought,  from  Martinique;  but  the  enormous 
and  unexpected  volume  of  work  I  had  to  do  ren 
dered  it  almost  impossible  to  write  anything  ex 
cept  business  letters  to  Harpers,  and  one  or  two 
necessary  notes  to  friends  looking  after  my  af- 


Letters  from  The  Raven        89 

fairs  elsewhere.  My  conviction  is  that  you  and 
I  would  do  well  to  spend  our  lives  in  the  An 
tilles.  All  dreams  of  Paradise  (even  Mahomet's) 
are  more  than  realized  there  by  nature;  —  after 
returning,  I  find  this  world  all  colorless,  all  grey, 
and  fearfully  cold.  I  feel  like  an  outcast  from 
heaven.  But  it  is  no  use  trying  to  tell  you  any 
thing  about  it  in  a  letter.  I  wrote  nearly  three 
hundred  pages  of  manuscript  to  the  Harpers 
about  it, — and  I  have  not  been  able  to  say  one 
thousandth  part.  I  got  two  little  orders  for  stamps 
for  you  at  Martinique, — pencil  stamps  like  the 
one  you  made  for  me.  One  is  to  be  c  Plissonneau, 
fils;'  the  other,  CA.  Testart.'  Send  bill  to  me, 
and  stamps  to  A.Testart,  St.  Pierre,  Martinique, 
French  W.  Indies.  I  hope  to  see  you  on  my  way 
South,  dear  old  Dad. 

"Believe  me  always, 

"LAFCADIO  HEARN" 

In  view  of  the  terrible  catastrophe  at  St.  Pierre, 
it  would  be  interesting  to  know  whether  Hearn's 
friends  perished  in  that  fury  of  fire  and  lava  and 
hot  ashes.  Hearn's  expectations  about  returning 
to  New  Orleans  were  not  destined  to  be  fulfilled. 
So  successful  had  he  been  in  his  work  for  Har- 


90       Letters  from  The  Raven 

pers  that,  a  week  later  than  the  date  of  the  pre 
vious  letter,  he  had  the  satisfaction  of  announ 
cing  that  he  was  going  back  to  what  at  that  time 
seemed  to  him  the  most  delightful  region  in  the 
world.  The  opening  of  this  letter  is  unique,  in  that 
it  is  the  only  one  in  which  he  is  in  the  least  cere 
monious: 

"H.  WATKIN,  ESQ.,  DEAR  OLD  DAD:  I  am 

going  right. back  to  the  Tropics  again,  this  time 
to  stay.  I  have  quit  newspapering  forever.  Wish 
I  could  see  you  and  chat  with  you  before  I  go, 
but  I  cannot  get  a  chance  this  time.  My  address 
will  be  care  American  Consul,  St.  Pierre,  Mar 
tinique,  Lesser  Antilles.  I  may  not  be  there  all 
the  time,  but  that  will  be  my  headquarters,  and 
there  letters  will  always  reach  me.  To-day  I  am 
packing,  rushing  around  breathlessly,  preparing 
to  go, —  so  that  my  letter  must  be  brief.  I  did  bet 
ter  with  my  venture  than  I  ever  expected ;  for  I 
got  for  my  work  done  seven  hundred  dollars, 
besides  having  secured  material  for  much  better 
work.  You  will  hear  of  me  in  the  Harper's  Mag 
azine  this  winter, — beginning  about  January  and 
February.  I  shall  be  able  hereafter  to  rest  where 
I  please;  so  that  I  shall  have  no  trouble,  when 


Letters  from  The  Raven       91 

I  get  to  New  York  again,  in  running  to  Cincin 
nati.  Of  course  I  don't  want  my  little  plans  known 
yet, —  because  no  one  knows  what  might  turn 
up;  but  these  are  the  present  prospects, —  quite 
bright  for  me.  I  will  write  from  Martinique  or 
Guadeloupe,  and  try  to  coax  you  to  go  down 
there.  Good-bye  for  a  little  while,  with  my  best 

lovet°y°U-  «L.  HEARN" 

Again  this  promise  of  letters  from  the  West 
Indies  was  destined  to  be  broken.  While  lotus- 
eating,  Hearn  wrote  few  letters.  He  was  most 
probably  busy,  amid  the  glow  and  color  of  the 
Antilles,studying  the  philosophical,  scientific, and 
religious  works  which  were  destined  so  strongly 
to  color  his  writings  about  Japan.  He  went  to 
the  latter  country  in  1890.  In  order  that  the  reader 
may  have  a  clear  understanding  of  events,  the 
facts  in  Hearn's  Japanese  career  may  be  told  in  a 
few  words.  In  1890  and  1891  he  served  as  Eng 
lish  teacher  in  the  ordinary  middle  school  and 
the  normal  school  of  Matsue  in  Izumo.  Next  he 
was  connected  with  the  government  school  at 
Kumamoto.  Then  came  newspaper  work  at  Kobe, 
and  finally  in  1896  he  was  honored  by  being 
made  lecturer  on  English  literature  at  the  Impe- 


92        Letters  from  The  Raven 

rial  University  of  Tokio,  which  position  he  held 
until  1903,  when  he  retired,  owing  to  increasing 
trouble  with  his  eyes,  which  had  caused  him  anx 
iety  all  his  life.  He  was  contemplating  a  lecture 
trip  in  the  United  States,  but  ill  health  pre 
vented.  He  died  at  his  Tokio  home  September 
26,  1 904,  and  was  buried  September  29,  with  the 
Buddhist  rites,  the  funeral  service  being  held  at 
the  temple  of  Jito-in  of  Ichigaya.  He  now  sleeps 
in  the  lonely  old  cemetery  of  Zoshigaya  in  the 
outskirts  of  the  capital.  Shortly  after  Hearn 
reached  Japan  Mr.  Watkin  obtained  his  address, 
and  wrote  him  a  letter  telling  how  often  he  had 
thought  of  him  and  had  expected  to  hear  from 
him  in  the  two  years  and  more  that  had  elapsed 
since  their  last  letters.  This  brought  a  speedy  re 
ply, — a  reply  which  showed  that,  so  far  as  his  feel 
ing  for  the  old  English  printer  was  concerned, 
there  was  little  difference  between  the  immature, 
ambition-stung  youth  of  nineteen  and  the  well- 
known,  mature  author  of  forty,  who  felt  in  some 
dim  way  that  there  amid  this  Oriental  people  he 
was  destined  to  live  and  die.  The  reply  to  Mr. 
Watkin  is  from  Yokohama,  and,  contrary  to 
Hearn's  previous  rule,  is  actually  dated, — April 
25,  1890. 


Letters  from  The  Raven       93 

"DEAR  OLD  DAD:  I  was  very  happy  to  feel 
that  your  dear  heart  thought  about  me;  I  also 
have  often  found  myself  dreaming  of  you.  I  ar 
rived  here,  by  way  of  Canada  and  Vancouver, 
after  passing  some  years  in  the  West  Indies.  I 
think  I  shall  stay  here  some  years.  I  have  not 
been  getting  rich,  —  quite  the  contrary ;  but  I  am 
at  least  preparing  a  foundation  for  ultimate  inde 
pendence, —  if  I  keep  my  health.  It  is  very  good 
now,  but  I  have  many  grey  hairs,  and  I  shall  be 
next  June  forty  years  old. 

"I  trust  to  make  enough  in  a  year  or  two  to 
realize  my  dream  of  a  home  in  the  West  Indies; 
if  I  succeed,  I  must  try  to  coax  you  to  come  along, 
and  dream  life  away  quietly  where  all  is  sun  and 
beauty.  But  no  one  ever  lived  who  seemed  more 
a  creature  of  circumstances  than  I ;  I  drift  with  va 
rious  forces  m  the  direction  of  least  resistance, — 
resolveto  love  nothing,and  love  always  too  much 
for  my  own  peace  of  mind, — places,  things,  and 
persons, — and  lo!  presto!  everything  is  swept 
away,  and  becomes  a  dream, — like  life  itself. 

"  Perhaps  there  will  be  a  great  awakening;  and 
each  will  cease  to  be  an  Ego,  but  an  All,  and  will 
know  the  divinity  of  Man  by  seeing,  as  the  veil 
falls,  himself  in  each  and  all. 


94       Letters  from  The  Raven 

"Here  I  am  in  the  land  of  dreams, — sur 
rounded  by  strange  Gods.  I  seem  to  have  known 
and  loved  them  before  somewhere:  I  burn  in 
cense  before  them.  I  pass  much  of  my  time  in 
the  temples,  trying  to  see  into  the  heart  of  this 
mysterious  people.  In  order  to  do  so  I  have  to 
blend  with  them  and  become  a  part  of  them.  It 
is  not  easy.  But  I  hope  to  learn  the  language; 
and  if  I  do  not,  in  spite  of  myself,  settle  here, 
you  will  see  me  again.  If  you  do  not,  I  shall  be 
under  big  trees  in  some  old  Buddhist  cemetery, 
with  six  laths  above  me,  inscribed  with  prayers 
in  an  unknown  tongue,  and  a  queerly  carved 
monument  typifying  those  five  elements  into 
which  we  are  supposed  to  melt  away.  I  trust  all 
is  well  with  you,  dear  old  Dad.  Write  me  when 
it  will  not  pain  your  eyes.  Tell  me  all  you  can 
about  yourself.  Be  sure  that  I  always  remember 
you;  and  that  my  love  goes  to  you. 

"LAFCADIO  HEARN 

"I  could  tell  you  so  much  to  make  you  laugh 
if  you  were  here;  and  to  hear  you  laugh  again 
would  make  me  very  happy." 

An  interval  of  over  four  years  now  occurred 
before  Hearn  wrote  once  more  to  Cincinnati. 


Letters  from  The  Raven       95 

Some  very  decided  changes  had  taken  place  in 
his  life.  He  had  wedded  a  Japanese  woman,  he 
had  a  son,  and  he  was  reputed  to  have  become 
a  Buddhist.  He  had  been  successful  with  his  lit 
erary  work,  his  essays  on  things  Japanese  being 
among  the  most  noteworthy  and  popular  articles 
in  the  jftlantic  Monthly.  It  was  at  this  period,  when 
Mr.  Watkin  thought  his  friend  was  most  happy, 
that  he  received  a  long  reply  from  Japan  in  re 
sponse  to  a  joint  letter  sent  by  the  old  gentleman 
and  his  daughter,  Miss  Effie  Watkin.  It  is  a  sin 
gular  thing  that  it  was  not  until  this  time  that 
Hearn  ever  mentioned  Mr.  Watkin's  wife  and 
daughter.  He  had  in  truth  been  few  times  in  their 
presence.  Mrs.  Watkin,  a  woman  of  strong  com 
mon  sense,  had  found  the  foolish  superstitions  of 
the  young  lad  hard  to  bear,  and  he  had  accord 
ingly,  when  in  Cincinnati,  confined  his  particular 
friendship  to  the  husband  and  father.  The  letter 
from  Hearn  rather  surprised  its  recipient  by  rea 
son  of  its  despondency.  It  had  much  of  the  old 
gloomy  cast  of  thought.  For  this  there  were  two 
potent  reasons.  One  was  his  worry  over  his  son's 
future.  The  other  was  his  worry  over  that  Japan 
he  had  learned  to  love  so  well.  He  felt  doubtful 
about  the  outcome  of  the  war  with  China, — the 


96        Letters  from  The  Raven 

letter  was  written  in  September,  1894, — and  trou 
bles  for  the  Mikado's  empire  always  made  him 
a  little  sad.  Singularly  enough,  the  same  feeling 
can  be  traced  very  clearly  in  his  book,  "Japan,  An 
Attempt  at  Interpretation/'  written  in  the  first 
months  of  the  struggle  with  Russia. 

One  other  word  of  introductory  comment  is 
necessary.  His  seeming  depreciation  of  his  own 
essays  was  only  the  reflection  of  his  general 
gloomy  viewpoint  at  the  time  the  letter  was  writ 
ten.  Hearn  was  dwelling  at  the  time  at  Kuma- 
moto. 

"  DEAR  OLD  DAD  :  It  delighted  me  to  get  that 
kindest  double  letter  from  yourself  and  sweet- 
hearted  little  daughter, —  or  rather  delighted  us. 
My  wife  speaks  no  English,  but  I  translated  it 
for  her.  She  will  send  a  letter  in  Japanese,  which 
Miss  Effie  will  not  be  able  to  read,  but  which 
she  will  keep  as  a  curiosity  perhaps.  Our  love  to 
you  both. 

"How  often  I  have  thought  of  you,  and  won 
dered  about  you,  and  wished  I  could  pass  with  you 
more  of  the  old-fashioned  evenings,  reading  an 
cient  volumes  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly^ — so  much 
better  a  magazine  in  those  days  than  in  these,  when 


Letters  from  The  Raven       97 

I  am  regularly  advertised  as  one  of  its  contributors. 

"I  often  wonder  now  at  your  infinite  patience 
with  the  extraordinary,  superhuman  foolishness 
and  wickedness  of  the  worst  pet  you  ever  had 
in  your  life.  When  I  think  of  all  the  naughty, 
mean,  absurd,  detestable  things  I  did  to  vex  you 
and  to  scandalize  you,  I  can't  for  the  life  of  me 
understand  why  you  did  n't  want  to  kill  me, — 
as  a  sacrifice  to  the  Gods.  What  an  idiot  I  was ! 
— and  how  could  you  be  so  good? — and  why 
do  men  change  so?  I  think  of  my  old  self  as  of 
something  which  ought  not  to  have  been  allowed 
to  exist  on  the  face  of  the  earth, — and  yet,  in 
my  present  self,  I  sometimes  feel  ghostly  re 
minders  that  the  old  self  was  very  real  indeed. 
Well,  I  wish  I  were  near  you  to  love  you  and 
make  up  for  all  old  troubles. 

"I  have  a  son.  He  is  my  torment  and  my 
pride.  He  is  not  like  me  or  his  mother.  He  has 
chestnut  hair  and  blue  eyes,  and  is  enormously 
strong, — the  old  Gothic  blood  came  out  upper 
most.  I  am,  of  course,  very  anxious  about  him. 
He  can't  become  a  Japanese, —  his  soul  isall  Eng 
lish,  and  his  looks.  I  must  educate  him  abroad. 
Head  all  above  the  ears, —  promises  to  be  intel 
ligent.  I  shall  never  have  another  child.  I  feel 


98        Letters  from  The  Raven 

too  heavily  the  tremendous  responsibility  of  the 
thing.  But  the  boy  is  there, —  intensely  alive; 
and  I  must  devote  the  rest  of  my  existence  to 
him.  One  thing  I  hope  for  is  that  he  will  never 
be  capable  of  doing  such  foolish  things  as  his 
daddy  used  to  do.  His  name  is  Kaji-wo  or  Ka- 
jio.  He  does  not  cry,  and  has  a  tremendous  ca 
pacity  for  growing.  And  he  gives  me  the  great 
est  variety  of  anxiety  about  his  future. 

"  When  you  hear  that  I  have  been  able  to  save 
between  thirty-five  hundred  and  four  thousand 
dollars,  you  will  not  think  I  have  made  no  pro 
gress.  But  I  have  put  all,  or  all  that  I  could  rea 
sonably  do,  in  my  wife's  name.  The  future  looks 
very  black.  The  reaction  against  foreign  influ 
ence  is  strong;  and  I  feel  more  and  more  every 
day  that  I  shall  have  to  leave  Japan  eventually, 
at  least  for  some  years.  When  I  first  met  you 
I  was  —  nineteen.  I  am  now  forty-four!  Well,  I 
suppose  I  must  have  lots  more  trouble  before  I 
go  to  Nirvana. 

"EfEe  says  you  do  not  see  my  writings.  My 
book  will  be  out  by  the  time  you  get  this  letter, 
—  that  is,  my  first  book  on  Japan.*  EfTie  can  read 
bits  of  it  to  you.  And  I  figure  in  the  Atlantic 
*  Glimpses  of  Unfamiliar  Japan. 


Letters  from  The  Raven 


99 


every  few  months.  Cheap  fame;  —  the  amazing 
fortune  I  once  expected  does  n't  turn  up  at  all. 
I  have  been  obliged  to  learn  the  fact  that  I  am 
not  a  genius,  and  that  I  must  be  content  with 
the  crumbs  from  the  table  of  Dives. 

"  But  this  is  all  Egotism.  I  am  guilty  of  it  only 
because  you  asked  for  a  small  quantity.  About 
yourself  and  all  who  love  you  my  letter  rather 
ought  to  be.  Speak  always  well  of  me  to  John 
Chamberlain  [a  journalist] .  I  liked  him  well.  Do 
you  remember  the  long  walks  over  the  Ohio, 
in  the  evening,  among  the  fireflies  and  grass 
hoppers,  to  hear  lectures  upon  spiritual  things? 
If  I  were  near  you  now,  I  could  saturate  you 
with  Oriental  spiritualism, — Buddhism, — every 
thing  you  would  like,  but  after  a  totally  novel 
fashion.  When  one  has  lived  alone  five  years  in 
a  Buddhist  atmosphere,  one  naturally  becomes 
penetrated  by  the  thoughts  that  hover  in  it;  my 
whole  thinking,  I  must  acknowledge,  has  been 
changed,  in  spite  of  my  long  studies  of  Spencer 
and  of  Schopenhauer.  I  do  not  mean  that  I  am  a 
Buddhist,  but  I  mean  that  the  inherited  ances 
tral  feelings  about  the  universe — the  Occiden 
tal  ideas  every  Englishman  has  —  have  been  to 
tally  transformed. 


ioo      Letters  from  The  Raven 

"There  is  yet  no  fixity,  however:  the  changes 
continue, —  and  I  really  do  not  know  how  I  shall 
feel  about  the  universe  later  on.  What  a  pity 
that  Western  education  and  Western  ideas  only 
corrupt  and  spoil  the  Japanese, —  and  that  the 
Japanese  peasant  is  now  superior  to  the  Japa 
nese  noble! 

"You  have  heard  of  tfre  war.  The  Japanese 
are  a  fighting  race;  and  I  think  they  will  win  all 
the  battles.  But  to  conquer  a  Chinese  army  is  not 
the  same  thing  as  to  conquer  the  Chinese  gov 
ernment.  The  war  makes  us  all  uneasy.  Japan's 
weakness  is  financial.  A  country  where  it  costs  a 
dollar  a  month  to  live,  and  where  the  population 
is  only  forty  million,  is  not  really  strong  enough 
for  such  an  enormous  job.  Our  hope  is  that  sci 
ence  and  rapidity  of  movement  may  compensate 
for  smallness  of  resources. 

"  I  am  almost  sure  I  shall  have  to  seek  Ame 
rica  again.  If  that  happens,  I  shall  see  you  or 
die.  All  now  is  doubt  and  confusion.  But  in  this 
little  house  all  is  love  to  you.  We  have  your 
picture;  ...  we  all  know  you,  as  if  you  were  an 
old  acquaintance. 

"  I  wish  we  could  be  together  somewhere  for 
a  pleasant  evening  chat,  hearing  in  the  inter- 


Letters  from  The  Ratfen      101 

vals  the  office  clock,  like  the  sound  of  a  long- 
legged  walker.  I  wish  we  could  talk  over  all 
the  hopes  and  dreams  of  ideal  societies,  and  the 
reasons  of  the  failure  to  realize  them.  I  wish  I 
could  tell  you  about  the  ideas  of  Western  civili 
zation  which  are  produced  by  a  long  sojourn  in 
the  Orient.  How  pleasant  to  take  country  walks 
again !  that  is,  if  there  be  any  country  left  around 
Cincinnati.  How  pleasant  to  read  to  you  strange 
stories  and  theories  from  the  Far  East!  Still,  I 
have  become  so  accustomed  to  Japanese  life  that 
a  return  to  Western  ways  would  not  be  altogether 
easy  at  first.  What  a  pity  I  did  not  reach  Japan 
ten  years  sooner! 

"Tell  me,  if  you  write  again,  all  pleasant  news 
about  old  friends.  Love  to  you  always,  and  be 
lieve  me  ever, 

"Your  extremely  bad  and  ungrateful 
"Grey-headed  boy, 

"LAFCADIO  HEARN" 

Shortly  after  this  long  letter  came  the  one  writ 
ten  by  Hearn's  Japanese  wife,  accompanied  by 
this  note: 

"DEAR  Miss  EFFIE:  Here  is  my  wife's  an 
swer  to  your  most  kind  letter.  She  thanks  you 


-ibV     Letter-s  from  The  Raven 


very  much  for  writing,  —  says  that  she  knows 
your  papa  well,  by  looking  at  his  photograph, 
and  by  hearing  me  talk  of  him;  she  apologizes 
for  not  being  able  to  write  or  speak  English; 
she  hopes  to  see  you  some  day,  and  to  be  shown 
by  you  some  of  the  wonders  of  the  Western 
world,  about  which  she  knows  nothing;  she 
tells  you  about  our  little  son;  and  finally  says 
that  if  she  ever  comes  to  America  she  will  bring 
you  some  curious  memento  from  Japan.  It  is 
all  written  in  the  old  style  of  high  Japanese 
courtesy,  in  which  your  letter  is  called  f  a  jewel- 
pen  letter/  Best  regards  and  kindest  love  for 
your  papa.  We  are  going  to  leave  Kumamoto. 
Will  write  again  soon. 

"LAFCADIO  HEARN" 

s 

In  1  895  an  accident  befell  Mr.  Watkin,and,upon 
his  request,  Mrs.  Watkin  wrote  a  letter  to  the 
distant  friend.  Mrs.  Watkin  was  rather  timid 
about  it  and  was  dubious  about  receiving  a  re 
ply.  However,  despite  this  feeling,  she  enclosed 
some  little  verses  of  hers  upon  a  spiritual  theme. 
In  a  short  time  she  received  the  following  reply: 


Letters  from  The  Raven      103 

"Kobe; — shimoyamatedori)  Shichome  J 
"Feb.  28,  1895 

"DEAR.  MRS.  WATKIN  :  Your  kind,  sweet  letter 
reached  me  by  last  American  mail,  and  gave  me 
all  the  pleasure  you  could  have  desired.  But  why 
have  you  even  dreamed  of  apologizing  for  writ 
ing  to  me,  who  love  you  all,  and  for  whom  every 
thing  is  comprehensible  even  if  not  wholly  com 
prehended?  All  love  and  good  wishes  to  you.  I 
received  the  little  poem,  and  liked  it.  Those  mys 
teries  in  which  you  appear  to  be  interested  are 
scarcely  mysteries  in  the  Far  East:  the  immate 
rial  world  counts  here  for  more  than  the  visible. 
Perhaps  some  day  I  may  suddenly  drop  in  upon 
you  all,  and  talk  ghostliness  to  you, — a  new 
ghostliness,  which  you  may  like.  Some  hints  of 
it  appear  in  a  little  book  of  mine,  to  be  issued 
about  the  time  this  letter  reaches  you, — c  Out  of 
the  East/ 

"I  really  think  I  may  see  you  and  my  dear 
old  Dad  again.  I  may  be  obliged  erelong  to  re 
turn,  at  least  temporarily,  to  America,  to  make 
some  money,  though  my  home  must  be  in  Japan 
till  my  boy  grows  up  a  little.  He  seems  to  be 
very  strong  and  bright,  and  queerly  enough  he  is 
fair.  I  have  two  souls  now,  which  is  troublesome; 


104      Letters  from  The  Raven 

for  his  every  word  and  cry  stirs  strange  ripples 
in  my  own  life,  and  the  freedom  of  being  re 
sponsible  only  for  oneself  is  over  forever  for  me. 
Whether  this  be  for  the  worse  or  the  better  in  the 
eternal  order  of  things,  the  Gods  must  decide. 

"I  should  like  to  see  your  new  home.  The 
other  one  was  very  cosy ;  but  perhaps  this  is  even 
better.  What  I  also  want  to  see  is  No.  26  Long- 
worth  Street,  and  to  hear  the  ticking  of  the  old 
clock  that  used  to  sound  like  the  steps  of  a  long- 
legged  man  walking  on  pavement.  Effie  wrote  me 
a  dear,  pretty  letter.  Thank  her  for  me.  It  is  just 
about  seven  years  now  since  I  saw  Dad.  I  sup 
pose  he  looks  now  more  like  Homer  than  ever. 
I  have  become  somewhat  grey,  and  have  crow's- 
feet  around  my  eyes.  Also  I  have  become  fat, 
and  disinclined  for  violent  exercise.  In  other 
words,  I  'm  getting  down  the  shady  side  of  the 
hill, — and  the  horizon  before  me  is  already  dark 
ening,  and  the  winds  blowing  out  of  it,  cold.  And 
I  am  not  in  the  least  concerned  about  the  enig 
mas, —  except  that  I  wonder  what  my  boy  will  do 
if  I  don't  live  to  be  nearly  as  old  as  Dad.  Ever 
with  all  affectionate  regards  to  him  and  yourself 
and  Effie, 

"LAFCADIO  HEARN" 


Letters  from  The  Raven      105 

In  1 896  Mr.  Watkin,  partially  recovered  from 
his  injuries,  wrote  Hearn  a  letter,  and  received  a 
last  one  from  him, — a  reply  in  which  the  writer 
finally  placed  the  seal  upon  the  finest  friendship 
in  his  history.  Unlike  some  of  his  other  attempts 
at  prophecy,  Hearn's  predictions  in  this  last  let 
ter  failed  to  come  true.  He  never  saw  his  old 
friend  again,  and  the  old  gentleman,  at  the  age 
of  eighty-two,  now  occupies  a  room  in  the  Old 
Men's  Home  in  Cincinnati,  counting  among 
his  chief  treasures  the  letters  which  have  been 
here  presented. 

"Kobt 

"  Nakayamattdori 

"  'j-chome 

u  Bangui  16 

"May  23,  '96 

"DEAR  OLD  DAD:  How  nice  to  get  so  dear  a 
letter  from  you!  I  know  the  cost  to  you  of  writ 
ing  it,  and  my  dear  old  father  must  not  imagine 
that  I  do  not  understand  why  he  cannot  write 
often.  With  his  little  grey  boy  it  is  much  the 
same  now:  he  finds  it  hard  to  write  letters,  and 
he  has  very  few  correspondents.  Why,  indeed, 
should  he  have  many?  True  men  are  few;  and 
the  autograph-hunters,  and  the  scheming  class 


io6     Letters  from  The  Raven 

of  small  publishers,  and  the  people  who  want 
gratis  information  about  commercial  matters  in 
Japan  are  not  considered  by  him  as  correspond 
ents.  They  never  get  any  answers.  I  have  two 
or  three  dear  friends  in  this  world:  is  not  that 
enough? — you  being  oldest  and  dearest.  To  feel 
that  one  has  them  is  much. 

"But  I  must  ask  many  pardons.  I  fear  Miss 
Effie  will  not  forgive  me  for  not  acknowledging 
ere  now  the  receipt  of  a  photograph,  which  sur 
prised  as  much  as  it  pleased  me.  To  think  of  the 
little  girl  having  so  developed  into  the  fine  se 
rious  woman!  How  old  it  makes  me  feel!  for  I 
remember  Miss  Effie  when  she  was  so  little. 
Please  ask  her  to  forgive  me.  I  was  away  when 
the  photograph  came  (in  Kyoto),  and  when  I 
returned,  lazily  put  off  writing  from  day  to  day. 
There  was,  however,  some  excuse  for  my  lazi 
ness.  I  have  been  very  sick  with  inflammation  of 
the  lungs,  and  am  getting  well  very  slowly.  But 
all  danger  is  practically  over. 

"I  see  from  the  kind  letter  of  protest  bearing 
your  initials  that  the  idealism  which  makes  love 
has  never  gone  out  of  your  heart  when  you  think 
of  me.  It  is  all  much  more  real  than  any  mate 
rialism  ;  see,  you  always  predicted  that  I  should 


Letters  from  The  Raven      107 

be  able  to  do  something,  while  extremely  prac 
tical,  materialistic  people  predicted  that  I  should 
end  in  jail  or  at  the  termination  of  a  rope.  And 
your  prediction  seems  to  have  been  wiser, —  for 
at  last,  at  last  I  am  attracting  a  little  attention  in 
England Also  I  see  (what  I  did  not  know  be 
fore)  that  some  people  have  been  writing  horrid 
things  about  me.  I  expected  it,  sooner  or  later, 
as  I  have  been  an  open  enemy  of  the  mission 
aries;  and,  besides,  the  least  success  in  this  world 
must  be  atoned  for.  The  price  is  heavy.  Those 
who  ignore  you  when  you  are  nobody  find  it 
necessary  to  hate  you  when  you  disappoint  their 
expectations.  But  if  I  keep  my  health  I  need 
not  care  very  much.  The  incident  only  brought 
out  some  of  the  honey  in  dear  old  Dad's  heart. 
"You  ask  about  my  boy.  I  can  best  respond 
by  sending  his  last  photo, —  nearly  three  years 
old  now.  If  I  can  educate  him  in  France  or  Italy, 
it  would  be  better  for  him,  I  think.  He  is  very 
sensitive;  and  I  am  afraid  of  American  or  Eng 
lish  school  training  for  him.  I  only  pray  the  Gods 
will  spare  me  till  he  is  eighteen  or  twenty.  I  am 
watching  to  see  what  he  will  develop ;  if  he  have 
any  natural  gift,  I  shall  try  to  cultivate  only  that 
gift.  Ornamental  education  is  a  wicked,  farcical 


io8      Letters  from  The  Raven 

waste  of  time.  It  left  me  incapacitated  to  do  any 
thing;  and  I  still  feel  the  sorrow  of  the  sin  of 
having  dissipated  ten  years  in  Latin  and  Greek, 
and  stuff,  .  .  .  when  a  knowledge  of  some  one 
practical  thing,  and  of  a  modern  language  or  two, 
would  have  been  of  so  much  service.  As  it  is,  I 
am  only  self-taught;  for  everything  I  learned  in 
school  I  have  since  had  to  unlearn.  You  helped 
me  with  some  of  the  unlearning,  dear  old  Dad ! 

"  I  really  expect  to  see  you.  You  are  only  sev 
enty-two,  and  hale,  and  I  trust  you  have  long 
years  before  you,  and  that  we  shall  meet.  About 
the  business  depression,  I  hear  that  it  is  passing 
and  that  'flush  times'  are  in  store  for  the  West. 
This,  I  trust,  will  be.  Oh,  no !  I  shall  not  have 
to  look  for  you  cin  the  old  men's  home,' — no, 
I  shall  see  you  in  your  own  home, —  and  talk 
queer  talk  to  you. 

"  For  the  time  being  (indeed,  for  two  years)  I 
have  lived  altogether  by  literary  work,  without 
breaking  my  little  reserves,  and  it  is  likely  that 
better  things  are  in  store  for  me.  I  am  anxious  for 
success, — for  the  boy's  sake  above  all.  To  have 
the  future  of  others  to  make  —  to  feel  the  respon 
sibilities —  certainly  changes  the  face  of  life.  I 
am  always  frightened,  of  course ;  but  I  work  and 


Letters  from  The  Raven      109 

hope.  That  is  the  best,  is  it  not?  Remember  me 
to  all  kind  friends.  Ask  Effie  to  forgive  my  rude 
silence,  and  all  yours  to  believe  my  love  and 
constant. remembrance. 

"  LAFCADIO  HEARN 

"I  am  a  Japanese  citizen  now  (Y.  Koizumi), — 
adopted  into  the  family  of  my  wife.  This  settles 
all  legal  question  as  to  property  as  well  as  mar 
riage  under  Japanese  law;  and  if  I  die,  the  Con 
sul  can't  touch  anything  belonging  to  my  peo 
ple." 

The  rest  is  silence. 


Letters  to  a  Lady 


Letters  to  a  Lady 

HEREWITH  are  presented  letters  that 
were  the  outgrowth  of  a  friendship  that 
probably  meant  a  great  deal  to  Lafcadio  Hearn 
at  the  time.  In  speaking  of  them,  one  inevitably 
thinks  of  Prosper  Merimee's  "Lettres  a  une  in- 
connue."  The  later  missives,  too,  must  for  years 
to  come  remain  "letters  to  an  unknown," — un 
known  to  all  save  a  few  persons.  It  was  only  re 
cently  that  the  natural  course  of  events  made  it 
at  all  possible  to  include  them  in  this  collection. 
Even  now  the  ban  of  silence  is  placed  on  many 
things  we  would  like  to  know. 

The  letters  were  written  during  the  memora 
ble  year  1876,  marked  by  exciting  political  con 
ventions  and  an  even  more  exciting  national  elec 
tion,  and  finally  by  the  great  Centennial  Exposi 
tion.  At  this  time  Hearn  was  in  his  twenty-sixth 
year.  He  had  been  in  the  United  States  for  nearly 
six  years,  and  was  at  the  time  employed  as  a  re 
porter  on  Mr.  Murat  Halstead's  Cincinnati  Com 
mercial.  Although  he  did  not  like  this  country 
and  was  at  this  time  dreaming  of  returning  some 
day  to  Europe,  he  had  been  trying  for  years  to 
make  a  thoroughly  competent  newspaper  repor- 


H4  Letters  to  a  Lady 

ter  of  himself.  However,  we  gather  from  re 
marks  in  his  letters  that  he  was  still  regarded  as 
only  a  minor  member  of  the  staff. 

Among  men  his  chief  friend  remained  Mr. 
Watkin.  If  he  had  any  friends  among  young 
women,  he  has  left  no  record  of  them.  He  seems 
to  have  been  more  or  less  solitary  always.  He  is 
constantly  telling  of  his  constraint  in  social  gath 
erings,  of  his  inability  to  appear  otherwise  than 
cold  to  those  around  him.  Life  was  indeed  to 
him  always  a  curious  carnival,  in  which  one 
must  be  careful  to  keep  on  the  mask,  to  guard  the 
tongue  lest  one  say  something  redounding  to 
one's  injury  or  discredit. 

With  such  characteristics,  we  are  therefore  at 
alossto  learn  how  his  intimacy  with  the  unknown 
began.  It  may  have  had  its  origin  when  some 
assignment  in  the  line  of  newspaper  duty  took 
him  to  her  home.  One  fancies  the  unknown  must 
have  had  a  keen  eye  for  character  and  ability  to 
discern  anything  unusual,  anything  love-worthy, 
in  the  ill-dressed,  somewhat  ill-featured,  shy, 
timid,  little  youth  Hearn  was  at  that  time.  It  had 
not  heretofore  been  his  good  fortune  to  attract. 
However  that  may  be,  the  established  fact  of  the 
friendship  remains. 


Letters  to  a  Lady  115 

The  identity  of  the  unknown  is  a  secret.  We 
are  told  that  she  was  a  woman  of  culture  and  re 
finement;  that  she  was  possessed  of  some  wealth; 
and,  finally,  that  she  was  many  years  older  than 
Hearn. 

Merimee  has  been  referred  to.  The  reference 
is  forced  upon  us  by  Hearn  himself.  He  men 
tions  those  famous  "Lettres,"  and  says  he  feels 
toward  his  "Dear  Lady"  as  Merimee  did  toward 
his  "inconnue."  The  comparison  is  not  exact. 
Indeed,  it  is  rather  a  case  of  contrast.  Like  Meri 
mee,  Hearn's  motto  seems  to  have  been,  with  very 
rare  exceptions,  "Remember  to  distrust;"  but, 
unlike  Merimee,  Hearn  was  not  a  man  of  wealth 
and  prominence  and  influence  in  his  native  land; 
unlike  Merimee,  Hearn  had  not  had  all  the 
advantages  wealth  and  culture  can  give;  unlike 
Merimee,  he  had  known,  and  was  still  destined 
to  know,  hard  and  bitter  years. 

With  Merimee,  the  French  stylist  par  excel 
lence ',  impersonality  was  a  passion.  His  was  an 
impersonality  that  was  broken  down  only  in  the 
famous  "Lettres."  Hearn,  on  the  other  hand, 
could  not  help  injecting  much  of  himself  into  his 
books.  Nor  does  the  contrast  end  there. 

"  For  her  first  thoughts,"  as  Walter  Pater  well 


n6  Letters  to  a  Lady 

says  of  the  "Lettres"  and  the  author's  attitude 
toward  the  woman  in  the  case,  "Merimee  is  al 
ways  pleading,  but  always  complaining  that  he 
gets  only  her  second  thoughts, — the  thoughts, 
that  is,  of  a  reserved,  self-limiting  nature." 

In  the  present  collection  of  letters,  the  roles 
are  reversed.  We  gather  from  the  letters  that  it 
was  Hearn  who  never  let  himself  go,  who  always 
kept  himself  under  cautious  restraint,  and  that 
it  was  the  woman  who  resented  these  second 
thoughts,  these  promptings  of  careful  medita 
tions  rather  than  of  fresh,  warm  impulses. 

In  Merimee  the  ardent  lover  alternated  with 
the  severe  critic.  Hequarrelled  with  the  unknown 
and  then  had  reconciliations,  until  at  last  the  old 
love  passed  away  into  a  form  of  calm  friendship. 
In  the  meantime  he  packed  his  letters  with  keen 
criticisms  of  books,  society,  politics,  archaeology, 
noted  people,  —  everything  that  interested  a  citi 
zen  of  the  world. 

In  Hearn  we  have  the  lonely  little  egotist,  writ 
ing  mainly  about  himself.  In  his  appreciation  of 
a  woman's  friendship  and  his  pride  in  her  cordial 
admiration,  he  expands  and  reveals  some  part 
of  his  own  thoughts,  beliefs,  studies.  For  the  rest, 
the  connection,  on  his  side  at  least,  seems  to  have 


Letters  to  a  Lady  117 

been  one  of  platonic  friendship.  The  lady  was 
more  or  less  exacting,  Hearn  being  constantly 
occupied  in  explaining  away  what  she  was  quick 
to  fancy  were  slights. 

She  would  seem  to  have  been  even  more  sen 
sitive  than  he.  To  speak  plainly,  too,  there  is  a 
note  of  evasion  in  his  letters;  despite  his  appre 
ciation  of  her,  he  seems  to  have  seized  upon  his 
newspaper  work  as  an  excuse  for  preventing  their 
friendship  becoming  something  more  intimate. 
He  kept  things  —  at  least  in  his  letters — upon  a 
very  formal  plane.  He  was  to  the  recipient,  one 
fancies,  provokingly  distant  in  his  "  Dear  Lady  " 
form  of  address.  There  was  an  ominous  sign  in 
the  constant  reference  to  letters  returned  or  un 
opened.  Indeed,  there  finally  came  the  breach 
that  in  the  nature  of  things  was  inevitable,  and 
then  all  his  letters  were  returned  to  him. 

The  young  man  did  not  destroy  them.  Shortly 
afterwards  he  departed  for  the  South.  It  is  not  a 
little  strange  that  in  all  the  years  in  New  Orleans 
that  followed — lean  years  and  fat,  years  of  bit 
ter  poverty  and  of  comparative  prosperity  — 
Hearn  preserved  this  batch  of  letters  intact. 
When  nearing  the  age  of  forty  and  close  to  that 
period  when  he  was  to  sail  for  Japan,  the  more 


n8  Letters  to  a  Lady 

or  less  matured  man  passed  judgment  upon  the 
letters  of  his  youth,  found  them  good,and  placed 
them  in  the  keeping  of  his  friend.  He  told  Mr. 
Watkin  to  do  with  the  faded  missives  what  he 
deemed  best.  In  some  fashion  he  would  seem  to 
have  felt  that  he  was  yet  destined  to  accomplish 
something  in  the  world  of  literature,  and  to  have 
proudly  thought  that  some  day  even  these  boy 
ish  screeds  would  be  eagerly  read. 

As  for  these  letters,  as  with  most  of  Hearn's 
missives,  they  were  for  the  most  part  undated,— 
written  hurriedly  on  any  kind  of  paper,  often  on 
mere  scraps. 

He  places  himself  before  us  as  the  "Oriental 
by  birth  and  half  by  blood ; "  as  a  lad  destined  for 
Catholicism,  and,  instead  of  that,  savagely  attack 
ing  the  religion  of  his  mother.  We  have  hints  of 
the  hard  measure  the  world  had  dealt  him  and 
how  he  felt  like  a  barbarian  beyond  the  pale  of 
polite  society.  He  confesses  himself  ill  at  ease 
among  the  cultivated  classes,  and  we  dimly  feel 
that  there  were  in  those  years,  before  he  came  to 
Cincinnati,  days  so  bitter  that  they  left  a  perma 
nent  mark.  Without  religious  faith,  going  to  the 
boyish  extreme  of  lightly  attacking  Christianity, 
he  imagined  himself  ready  to  become  a  sort  of 


Letters  to  a  Lady  119 

aesthetic  pagan,  worshipping  Venus  and  theother 
gods  of  the  antique  world.  As  antagonistic  to  ac 
cepted  pulpit  teaching,  he  read  Darwin, and  pom 
pously  and  not  a  little  solemnly  announced,  "I 
accept  Darwin  fully." 

Perhaps  no  inconsiderable  portion  of  this  pa 
ganism  was  caus-ed  by  his  youthful  worship  of 
Swinburne.  All  young  men  in  the  late  sixties  and 
early  seventies,  with  an  ear  for  verbal  music  and 
magic,  were  swearing  allegiance  to  the  bard  of  the 
famous  "Poems  and  Ballads."  Indeed,  one  feels 
that  Hearn  would  have  been  a  poet  himself,  had 
he  but  been  gifted  with  the  faculty  of  rhyme. 
Much  of  the  other  equipment  of  the  poet  was 
his  in  abundant  measure,  —  the  love  of  beauty, 
the  love  of  lovely  words,  the  joy  in  the  manifold 
things  of  nature  and  art. 

Speaking  of  Swinburne  brings  us  to  his  read 
ing,  and  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  that  little  shelf  of 
treasured  books, —  Balzac  and  Gautier  and  Rabe 
lais  in  the  French ;  Poe,  to  be  sure;  and — strange 
choice — the  poems  of  Mr.  Thomas  Bailey  Al- 
drich. 

In  these  "Letters  to  a  Lady"  there  is  com 
paratively  little  discussion  of  literary  subjects,  save 
the  mention  of  the  fact  that  he  is  reading,  always 


120  Letters  to  a  Lady 

reading.  Of  literary  criticism  there  is  but  little. 
In  one  letter,  indeed,  we  do  get  a  reference  to 
the  character  of  the  Sultana  of  Aldrich's  "Cloth 
of  Gold,"  but  this  is  a  moral  rather  than  a  lite 
rary  discussion.  The  sign  that  he  was  ranging  far 
afield  among  other  men's  works,  and  also  the 
hint  of  the  writer  that  was  to  be,  is  given  in  little 
sentences  dropped  half  unconsciously  here  and 
there,  —  sentences  that  to  the  student  of  Hearn's 
letters  seem  to  be  characteristic  of  his  ways  of 
thought,  as  when  he  says,  "Somehow  the  ghosts 
of  the  letters  I  write  by  night  laugh  in  my  face 
by  day;"  or  when  he  speaks  of  his  horror  of 
crowds  and  compares  it  to  the  terror  of  the  de 
sert  camel  being  urged  toward  the  white  walls  and 
shining  minarets  of  the  city  beyond  the  desert; ' 
or  when,  curiously  enough,  he  speaks  of  himself 
as  seeming  like  a  lizard  in  the  July  sun,  a  very 
similar  turn  of  thought  having  been  employed 
by  Flaubert  in  one  of  his  letters,  which  Hearn 
had  probably  never  read,  even  though  he  did 
once  plan  a  translation  from  that  author. 

It  is  only  necessary  in  conclusion  to  call  at 
tention  to  one  more  letter  in  this  section.  As  a 
matter  of  plain  prose  it  would  seem  that  the  lady 
had  complained  of  the  coldness  and  the  dubious 


Letters  to  a  Lady  121 

tone  of  some  of  Hearn's  letters  and  had  returned 
them  to  him.  In  response  he  wrote  to  her  a  fable 
of  a  Sultan  and  a  neighboring  Sultana.  He  told 
how  the  Sultana  complained  of  the  Sultan's  mes 
sengers,  and  how  the  Sultan  committed  them  to 
death  by  fire.  The  lady  was  supposed,  from  this 
pretty  fable,  to  draw  the  conclusion  that  Hearn's 
letters  had  been  destroyed  by  their  author.  From 
the  collection  herewith  appended,  it  can  be  seen 
that  the  fabulist  availed  himself  of  poetic  license. 


DEAR  FRIEND:  Your  last  kind  letter  makes  me 
in  some  sort  ashamed  of  my  diffidence  and  cold 
ness.  Yet  you  must  be  aware  how  peculiarly  I  feel 
myself  situated, — constrained,  watched  every 
where  by  a  hundred  eyes  that  know  me,  hemmed 
in  with  conventionalities  of  which  I  only  know 
the  value  sufficiently  to  have  my  nerves  on  a  per 
petual  strain  through  fear  of  breaking  them.  I  am 
not  by  nature  cold,  —  quite  the  reverse,  indeed, 
as  many  a  bitter  experience  taught  me;  and  I  beg 
you  to  attribute  my  manner  rather  to  overcau- 
tion  than  to  indifference  to  the  feelings  of  others. 


122  Letters  to  a  Lady 

Why,  do  not  we  all  wear  masks  in  this  great  car 
nival  mummery  of  life,  in  which  we  all  dance  and 
smile  disguisedly,  until  the  midnight  of  our  allot 
ted  pleasure  time  comes;  and  the  King-Skeleton 
commands,  "Masks  off — show  your  skulls"? 
I  am  afraid  you  do  not  understand  [me]  ;  or 
rather,  I  feel  sure  you  do  not  wholly,  —  for  you 
have  had  little  opportunity.  You  have  only  seen 
me  on  my  best  behavior;  perhaps  you  might 
think  less  of  me  under  other  circumstances,  but 
never  think  me  a  chilly  phantom,  though  you 
may  occasionally  see  me  only  as  the  Shadow  of 
that  which  I  really  am.  Have  I  been  rude?  Try 

to  forgive  my  rudeness.  It  was  involuntary 

I  think  I  understood  your  letters;  and  I  did  not 
form  any  opinion  therefrom,  I  feel  sure,  which 
you  would  not  have  liked.  I  wish  I  could  be  less 
strained  and  conventional  in  company.  Will  try 
my  best  to  do  better.  Sincerely, 

L.  HEARN 


ii 


DEAR  FRIEND  AND  LADY  (if  I  may  so  call  you): 
Do  not  suppose  that  when  I  delay  answering  one 
of  your  kind  letters,  the  tardiness  is  attributable 


Letters  to  a  Lady  123 

to  neglect  or  forgetfulness  or  inappreciation  of 
your  favor.  I  thoroughly  feel  —  and  feel  keenly 
—  every  kind  word  or  thought  you  have  ex 
pressed  or  felt  forme;  I  have  never  rendered  you, 
it  is  true,  a  single  compliment  worthy  of  those 
I  have  received,  —  but  only  because  I  was  sure 
that  you  understood  my  feelings  better  than  if  I 
had  expressed  them;  I  never  write  altogether  as  I 
think,  partly  because  I  am  not  naturally  demon 
strative,  and  while  capable  of  more  than  ordi 
nary  sensitive  feeling,  I  have  a  kind  of  reluctance 
to  take  off  what  I  might  term  my  little  mask. 
Don't  hesitate  to  scold  me,  as  you  threaten, 
should  you  think  I  deserve  it.  ... 

I  have  been  busy  all  day  among  noisy  crowds 
of  enthusiastic  Catholics;  and  I  shudder  at  the 
thought  of  entering  a  crowd  at  all  times,  just  as 
the  desert  camel  shudders  when  his  driver  urges 
him  toward  the  white  walls  and  the  shining  mina 
rets  of  a  city  sparkling  beyond  the  verge  of  the 
silent  yellow  waste.  Consequently  I  was  not  able 
to  write  till  late;  and  even  now  I  am  not  in  a 
good  writing  humor.  One's  skull  becomes  peo 
pled  with  Dreams  and  Fantastic  Things  just  be 
fore  daybreak;  and  if  you  notice  aught  foolish 
or  absurd  in  these  lines,  please  attribute  them  to 


124  Letters  to  a  Lady 

that  weird  influence  which  comes  on  us  all  — 

"in  the  dead  vast  and  middle  of  the  night" 
I  must  make  one  more  visit  to  the  Central  Po 
lice  Station  ere  cockcrow, — poetically  speaking. 

Sincerely, 

LAP.  HEARN 

in 

Cincinnati,  Thursday ,  27,  1876 
DEAR  LADY:  I  return  by  mail  the  very  inter 
esting  letters  which  you  kindly  left  for  my  peru 
sal  ;  also,  the  list  of  Mr. 's  collection,  where 
of  I  have  taken  a  copy.  The  other  collectors 
are  so  slow  in  preparing  their  lists  that  I  fear 
I  shall  not  be  able  to  publish  a  full  account  of 
their  contributions  to  the  World's  Exposition 
for  several  days  yet.  ...  I  am  very  thankful  for 
your  assistance  in  obtaining  information  regard 
ing  these  things. 

As  an  English  subject,  and  one  who  feels  a 
kind  of  home  interest  in  European  news,  you 
may  feel  assured  that  the  letters  from  beyond  the 
"great  water"  interested  me  extremely. 

The  author  gives  a  pleasant,  realistic,  and  en 
tertaining  picture  of  the  brilliant  social  affair 
whereof  her  letter  treats;  and  her  account  would 


Letters  to  a  Lady  125 

have  done  credit  to  most  foreign  newspaper  cor 
respondents,  speaking  from  a  journalistic  point 
of  view. . . . 

Believe  me  very  respectfully  yours, 

L.  HEARN 


IV 

There  is  a  fragment  in  which  is  taken  up  the 
matter  of  invitations  he  has  refused.  It  is  chiefly 
interesting  because  of  his  expressed  desire  to  re 
turn  to  Europe: 

"I  daily  receive  and  pay  no  attention  what 
ever  to  other  invitations,  because  I  know  my  pre 
sence  is  only  desired  for  journalistic  favors;  but 
with  you  I  regret  to  be  unable  to  accept  them 
quite  as  much  as  you  could.  In  speaking  of  im 
pulses,  I  refer  merely  to  sudden  actions  without 
preparation, — such  as  your  first  note  of  yester 
day;  or  your  action  on  fancying  that  I  had  been 
talking  too  much;  or  your  becoming  vexed  at 
me  for  what  I  could  not  help.  You  ought  to  know 
that  I  would  do  anything  in  my  power  to  please 
you  or  to  accommodate  you. . . . 

"Let  me  also  take  this  opportunity  of  thank 
ing  you  for  those  books  again.  I  have  been  very 


i26  Letters  to  a  Lady 

much  fascinated  by  one  of  them  and  have  not 
only  read  but  re-read  it.  It  is  seemingly  by  some 
strange  fatuity  that  your  little  invitations  have 
latterly  fallen  on  busy  days.  Last  week  it  was  all 
work;  and  this  week  I  have  had  a  very  easy  time 
of  it.  You  looked  at  me  yesterday  as  if  I  had 
done  you  some  injury,  and  you  hated  to  see  me. 
If  you  go  to  Europe,  my  best  wishes  go  with  you. 
I  hope  to  return  there,  and  leave  this  country 
forever  some  day  in  the  remote  future. 
"Do  not  be  offended  at  my  letter. 

«L.  H." 


In  a  letter  dated  "Thursday  p.  m.,  1876"  we 
find  him  apologizing  for  some  breach  of  etiquette. 
He  then,  as  usual,  complains  of  the  newspaper 
man's  lot: 

"This  afternoon  I  received  your  kind  note. 
One  of  the  misfortunes  of  a  journalistic  existence 
is  the  inability  of  a  newspaper  man  to  fulfil  an 
appointment,  meet  an  engagement,  or  definitely 
accept  an  invitation  not  immediately  connected 
with  his  round  of  regular  duty,  as  he  may  at 
any  moment  be  ordered  to  the  most  outlandish 


Letters  to  a  Lady  127 

places  in  the  pursuit  of  news.  I  think,  however, 
that  I  may  safely  accept  your  kind  invitation  to 
dine  with  you  on  Sunday  at  one  o'clock  p.  m., 
and  also  to  ride  out  to  Avondale.  Nothing  could 
give  me  greater  pleasure;  the  more  so  as  Sunday 
is  an  inordinately  dull  day  in  the  newspaper 
sphere.  I  will  certainly  be  on  hand  unless  some 
thing  very  extraordinary  should  intervene  to 
prevent;  and  in  such  event  I  shall  endeavor  to 
inform  you  beforehand,  so  as  not  to  cause  you 
any  trouble. 

"I  remain,  dear  Lady, 

"Very  respectfully, 

"L.  HEARN" 

VI 

Cincinnati,  Friday^  1876 

DEAR  LADY:  I  very  much  regret  that  I  should 
have  inadvertently  worded  my  last  note  in  so 
clumsy  a  manner  as  to  make  it  appear  that  in  ac 
cepting  your  kind  invitation  I  was  prospectively 
interested  in  nothing  but  "items"  and  thankful 
only  for  the  opportunity  of  obtaining  news.  In 
mentioning  that  I  was  especially  glad  to  accept 
your  invitation  on  Sunday,  "as  it  is  an  especially 
dull  day  for  news,"  I  simply  meant  that  I  would 


128  Letters  to  a  Lady 

find  more  leisure  time  on  Sunday  than  upon  any 
other  day  in  the  week;  and  would  thus  feel  more 
pleasure  in  making  a  call  without  being  worried 
by  office  business.  I  hope  you  will  therefore  con 
sider  my  rudeness  the  result  of  hurried  writing 
and  clumsy  phraseology  rather  than  of  deliberate 
ignorance. 

If  it  be  agreeable  to  you,  I  will  call  upon  you 
at  i  p.  m.  on  Sunday  as  per  invitation.  I  cannot 
definitely  say,  however,  what  I  could  do  in  the 
way  of  writing  an  account  of  other  collections 
than  what  have  already  been  spoken  of,  inasmuch 
as  I  am,  you  know,  only  a  reporter  in  the  office, 
and  subject  to  orders  from  the  City  Editor. 

As  I  have  not  written  any  letters  except  of  a 
business  character  for  several  years,  please  to  ex 
cuse  any  apparent  lack  of  courtesy  in  my  note.  I 
am  apt  to  say  something  malapropos  without  in 
tending.  I  remain, 

Very  respectfully  yours, 

LAFCADIO  HEARN 


VII 


DEAR   LADY:   Excuse   my    tardiness  in   reply 
ing  to  your  kind  and,  may  I  say,  too  complimen- 


Letters  to  a  Lady  129 

tary  letter;  for  I  scarcely  deserve  the  courteous 
interest  you  have  expressed  in  regard  to  my 
self.  Also  let  me  assure  you  that  you  are  very 
much  mistaken  in  fancying  that  I  am  so  used  to 
all  kinds  of  people  as  to  feel  no  pleasure  in  such 
introductions  as  that  of  Sunday  evening.  The 
fact  is  that  I  was  very  much  pleased;  but  am  so 
poor  a  hand  at  compliments  that  I  feared  even 

to  express  to  Miss the  pleasure  I  felt  in  her 

songs  and  playing,  to  wish  you  many  happy 
returns  of  your  birthday,  or  to  hint  how  well 
I  enjoyed  the  conversation  of  your  lady  sister. 
I  have  not  visited  out  since  I  was  sixteen,  —  nine 
years  ago;  have  led  a  very  hard  and  extraordi 
nary  life  previous  to  my  connection  with  the 
press, —  became  a  species  of  clumsy  barbarian, — 
and  in  short  for  various  reasons  considered  my 
self  ostracized,  tabooed,  outlawed.  These  facts 
should  be  sufficient  to  explain  to  you  that  I  am 
not  used  to  all  sorts  of  people, —  not  to  the  culti 
vated  class  of  people  at  all,  and  feel  all  the  greater 
pleasure  in  such  a  visit  as  that  referred  to.  ... 
I  have  not  had  time  yet  to  conclude  the  en 
tertaining  volume  of  travel  you  kindly  sent  me, 
but  have  read  sufficient  to  interest  me  extremely. 
1  find  a  vast  number  of  novel  and  hitherto  un- 


130  Letters  to  a  Lady 

published  fads, —  the  results  of  more  than  ordi 
narily  keen  observation  in  the  work.  If  I  were 
reviewing  the  book,  I  might  feel  inclined  to  take 
issue  with  the  author  in  respect  to  his  views  con 
cerning  the  work  of  the  missionaries  inTahiti, — 
who  have  been,  you  know,  most  severely  criti 
cised  by  radically  minded  observers;  but  the 
writer's  pictures  are  clearly  defined,  realistic,  and 
powerfully  drawn.  I  must  not  waste  your  time, 
however,  with  further  gossip  just  now. 
Believe  me,  dear  Lady, 

Very  respectfully  yours, 

L.  HEARN 


VIII 


DEAR  LADY:  I  am  not  so  insusceptible  to  such 
pretty  flattery  as  yours,  even  though  I  think  it 
undeserved,  as  to  feel  otherwise  than  pleased.  Of 
course  I  am  vain  enough  to  be  gratified  at  any 
thing  good  said  of  me  by  you  or  your  friends.  In 
regard  to  enjoying  music  and  flowers,  I  would  only 
say  that  I  love  everything  beautiful,  and  can  only 
look  at  the  social,  ethical,  or  natural  world  with 
the  eyes  of  a  pagan  rather  than  a  Christian,  re 
vering  the  heathen  philosophy  of  aesthetic  sense; 


Letters  to  a  Lady  131 

and  surely  so  must  all  who  truly  love  the  antique 
loveliness  of  the  Antique  World,  which  deified  all 
fair  things  and  worshipped  only  those  beauties  of 
form  and  sense  whereof  it  brought  forth  the  high 
est  types.  But  to  speak  truly,  I  am  afraid  of  par 
ties;  one's  nerves  are  ever  on  a  painful  strain  in 
the  effort  to  be  agreeable,  in  the  fear  of  doing 
something  gauche,  and  in  the  awful  perplexity  of 
searching  for  compliments  which  must  fall  on  the 
ear  as  vapid  and  commonplace,  —  vanity  and 
vexation  of  spirit.  Indeed,  I  much  enjoyed  the 
little  party  the  other  night,  because  it  was  a  home 
circle;  and  I  did  not  feel  as  though  people  were 
scrutinizing  my  face,  my  manners,  my  dress,  or 
criticising  my  words  with  severe  mental  criticism, 
or  making  the  awful  discovery  that  I "  had  hands  " 
and  did  not  know  what  to  do  with  them. 

I  did  not  tell  you  when  my  vacation  should 
commence,  because  I  did  not  know  myself;  in 
deed,  I  do  not  yet  know.  Our  vacations  gene 
rally  commence  about  June,  when  each  one  in 
turn  takes  a  couple  or  three  weeks'  travel  and 
rest;  but  as  I  am  the  youngest  and  freshest 
(in  the  sense  of  inexperience)  of  the  staff,  I 
suppose  I  will  have  to  wait  my  turn  until  the 
others  have  decided.  Some  like  to  escape  the  hot 


132  Letters  to  a  Lady 

weather.  I  love  hot  weather,  —  the  hotter  the 
better.  I  feel  always  like  a  lizard  in  the  July 
sun;  and  when  the  juice  of  the  poison  plants  is 
thickest  and  the  venomous  reptiles  most  active) 
then  I,  too,  feel  life  most  enjoyable,  as  "Elsie 
Venner"  did.  Therefore  I  may  have  to  wait  for 
my  vacation  till  the  golden  autumn  cometh;  but 
I  will  endeavor  to  get  away  so  soon  as  I  can,  and 
will  let  you  know  just  so  soon  as  I  know  myself. 
Very  respectfully  yours,  dear  Lady, 

LAFCADIO  HEARN 

IX 

Cincinnati,  May  9,  1876 

DEAR  LADY:  I  am  at  once  gratified  and  sur 
prised  to  find  that  my  little  article  should  have 
given  you  so  much  pleasure.  Had  I  not  been 
very  busy  with  a  mass  of  matter-of-fact  work  last 
evening,  I  should  have  done  better  justice  to 

Mr. 's  splendid  collection.  That  was  a  very 

unfortunate  mistake  of  mine  in  regard  to  his 
name,  but  I  shall  try  to  correct  it. 

In  regard  to  mentioning  Mr.  's  name, 

I  desire  to  say  to  you,  in  strict  confidence,  that 
I  purposely  omitted  it  for  prudential  reasons. 
Newspapers  are  very  jealous  of  their  employes 


Letters  to  a  Lady  133 

in  the  matter  of  giving  compliments ;  and  I  feared 
that  further  mention  just  at  this  time  might  ren 
der  it  all  the  more  difficult  for  me  to  do  you  a 
reportorial  kindness  on  some  future  occasion. 
This  may  seem  odd;  but  one  outside  the  news 
paper  circle  can  have  no  idea  how  particular 
newspaper  proprietors  are. 

With  regard  to  my  article,  dear  Lady,  I  would 
say,  in  reply  to  your  kind  query,  that  you  are 
welcome  to  use  it  as  you  please.  I  only  regret 
the  lack  of  time  to  have  improved  it  before  it 
appeared  in  the  Commercial.  My  love  for  things 
Oriental  need  not  surprise  you,  as  I  happen  to 
be  an  Oriental  by  birth  and  half  by  blood. 

I  cannot  definitely  answer  you  in  regard  to 
the  prospective  country  visit,  so  courteously  pro 
posed,  until  I  see  you  again  or  hear  from  you.  I 
fear  I  shall  have  to  postpone  the  pleasure  until 
the  regular  reporters'  vacation  time, — that  is,  if 
it  should  necessitate  absence  from  duty  for  any 
considerable  length  of  time.  However,  you  can 
explain  further  when  I  again  have  the  pleasure 
of  seeing  you;  and  if  I  can  possibly  get  away,  I 
will  be  only  too  glad  of  so  pleasant  a  holiday. 
Very  respectfully  and  gratefully, 

L.  HEARN 


134  Letters  to  a  Lady 


DEAR  LADY:  If  I  disappointed  you  last  even 
ing,  be  sure  that  I  myself  was  much  more  disap 
pointed,  especially  as  I  had  to  pass  within  a 
stone's  throw  of  your  house  without  going  in.  I 
believe  that  if  you  only  knew  how  frightfully 
busy  we  all  are,  you  would  have  postponed  the 
invitation  until  next  week,  when  I  shall  have 
some  leisure  and  hope  to  see  you.  I  had  expected 
up  to  the  last  moment  to  be  able  to  call,  if  only 
for  an  hour;  but  a  sudden  appointment  put  it 
out  of  my  power.  The  convention  is  keeping  us 
all  as  busy  as  men  can  be. 

I  see  you  returned  my  letter.  I  know  it  was 
not  a  satisfactory  one.  Somehow  the  ghosts  of 
the  letters  I  write  by  night  laugh  in  my  face  by 
day.  I  either  talk  too  freely  or  write  too  hur 
riedly.  I  will  not  certainly  give  your  books  away, 
for  I  prize  them  highly  and  am  delighted  with 
them.  I  had  thought  they  were  only  lent.  They 
now  nestle  on  my  book-shelf  along  with  a  copy 
of  Balzac's  "Contes  Drolatiques,"  illustrated  by 
Dore,  Gautier's  most  Pre-Raphael  and  wicked 
est  work,  Swinburne,  Edgar  Poe,  Rabelais,  Al- 
drich,  and  some  other  odd  books  which  form  my 


Letters  to  a  Lady  135 

library.  I  generally  read  a  little  before  going  to 
bed. 

I  hope  to  visit  your  farm  indeed,  but  the 
journalist  is  a  creature  who  sells  himself  for  a 
salary.  He  is  a  slave  to  his  master,  and  must 
await  the  course  of  events. 

No;  you  must  not  pity  me  or  feel  sorry  for 
me.  What  would  you  do  if  I  were  to  write  you 
some  of  my  up-and-down  experiences  and  absur 
dities?  And  you  cannot  be  of  service  to  me  ex 
cept  I  were  suddenly  to  lose  everything  and  not 
know  where  to  turn.  Now  I  am  doing  very  well, 
and  would  be  doing  better  but  for  an  esca 
pade.  .  .  . 

Of  course  I  will  write  you  in  P — ;  I  should 
like  nothing  better,  feeling  towards  you  like 
Prosper  Merimee  to  his  "inconnue."  I  wish  I 
could  make  my  letters  equally  interesting. 

I  do  not  think  that  I  am  unfortunate  in  life, 
and  yet  I  have  done  everything  to  make  me  so. 
If  you  only  knew  some  of  my  follies,  you  would 
cease  perhaps  to  like  me.  Some  day  I  will  confide 
some  of  my  oddities  to  you.  But  don't  think  me 
unfortunate  because  I  am  a  skeptic. 

Skepticism  is  hereditary  on  my  father's  side. 
My  mother,  a  Greek  woman,  was  rather  rever- 


136  Letters  to  a  Lady 

ential;  she  believed  in  the  Oriental  Catholicism, 
—  the  Byzantine  fashion  of  Christianity  which 
produced  such  hideous  madonnas  and  idiotic- 
looking  saints  in  stained  glass.  I  think  being 
skeptical  enables  one  to  enjoy  life  better, — to 
live  like  the  ancients  without  thought  of  the 
Shadow  of  Death.  I  was  once  a  Catholic, — at 
least,  my  guardians  tried  to  make  me  so,  but 
only  succeeded  in  making  me  dream  of  all  priests 
as  monsters  and  hypocrites,  of  nuns  as  goblins 
in  black  robes,  of  religion  as  epidemic  insanity, 
useful  only  in  inculcating  ethics  in  coarse  minds 
by  main  force.  Afterwards  it  often  delighted  me 
to  force  a  controversy  upon  some  priest,  deny 
his  basis  of  belief,  and  find  him  startled  to  dis 
cover  that  he  could  not  attempt  to  establish  it 
logically. 

You  say,"  What  else  is  there  "but  faith  to  make 
life  pleasant?  Why,  the  majority  of  things  that 
faith  despises.  I  fancy  if  one  will  only  try  to  ana 
lyze  the  amount  of  comfort  derived  from  Chris 
tianity  by  himself,  he  will  find  the  candid  an 
swer.  Whence  come  all  our  arts,  our  loves,  our 
luxuries,  our  best  literature,  our  sense  of  man 
hood  to  do  and  dare,  our  reverence  or  respect 
for  Woman,  our  sense  of  beauty,  our  sense  of 


Letters  to  a  Lady  137 

humanity?  Never  from  Christianity.  From  the 
antique  faiths,  the  dead  civilizations,  the  lost 
Greece  and  Rome,  the  warrior-creed  of  Scandi 
navia,  the  Viking's  manhood  and  reverence  for 
woman, — his  creator  and  goddess.  Yet  all  faiths 
surely  have  their  ends  in  shaping  and  perfecting 
this  electrical  machine  of  the  human  mind,  and 
preparing  the  field  of  humanity  for  a  wider  har 
vest  of  future  generations,  long  after  the  worms, 
fed  from  our  own  lives,  have  ceased  to  writhe 
about  us,  as  the  serpents  writhe  among  the  grin- 
ningmasks  of  stone  on  the  columns  of  Persepolis. 
How  you  must  be  bored  by  so  long  a  letter! 

[  The  letter  is  signed  by  a  drawing  of  the  raven,  familiar 
in  the  letters  to  Mr.  Watkin.~] 


XI 

DEAR  LADY:  There  once  lived  an  Eastern  Sul 
tan  who  reigned  over  a  city  fairer  than  far  Sa- 
marcand.  He  dwelt  in  a  gorgeous  palace  of  the 
most  bizarre  and  fantastically  beautiful  Saracenic 
design, —  columns  of  chalcedony  andgold-veined 
quartz,  of  onyx  and  sardonyx,  of  porphyry  and 
jasper,  upheld  fretted  arches  of  a  fashion  love 
lier  than  the  arches  of  the  Mosque  of  Cor- 


138  Letters  to  a  Lady 

dova.  There  were  colonnades  upon  colonnades, 
domes  rising  above  courts  where  silver  fountains 
sang  the  songs  of  the  Water-Spirit;  here  were 
minarets  whose  gilded  crescents  kissed  the  azure 
heaven;  there  were  eunuchs,  officers,  execution 
ers,  viziers,  odalisques,  women  graceful  of  form 
as  undulating  flame. 

In  a  neighboring  kingdom  dwelt  a  sultry-eyed 
Sultana, —  a  daughter  of  sunrise,  shaped  of  fire 
and  snow,  impulsive,  generous,  and  far  more  po 
tent  than  the  Sultan.  Either  desired  to  become 
the  friend  of  the  other,  But  either  feared  to  cross 
the  line  of  purple  hills  which  separated  the  king 
dom.  But  they  held  communication  by  messen 
gers.  The  Sultana's  messengers  always  spoke  the 
truth,  yet  scarcely  spoke  plainly,  having  great 
faith  in  diplomatic  suggestion  rather  than  in 
blunt  and  forcible  utterance.  The  Sultan's  mes 
sengers,  on  the  other  hand,  only  spoke  half  of  the 
truth,  being  fearful  lest  their  words  should  be 
overheard  by  the  keen  ears  of  men  who  desired 
that  no  courtesies  should  be  exchanged  between 
their  mistress  and  her  neighboring  brother.  At 
last  the  Sultana  became  wroth  with  a  great  wrath 
at  the  messengers,  forasmuch  as  they  conversed 
only  in  enigmas,  the  Sultana  being  apparently 


Letters  to  a  Lady  139 

quite  unable  to  imagine  why  they  should  so 
speak.  Therefore  the  Sultana  bound  the  messen 
gers,  stripped  them  naked,  and,  placing  them  in 
bags,  despatched  them  by  a  camel  caravan  to  the 
Sultan,  expressing  much  anger  at  the  conduct  of 
the  messengers.  The  Sultan,  being  alarmed  at 
the  detention  of  his  messengers,  knowing  their 
proverbial  loquacity,  and  fearing  they  had  turned 
traitors,  thanked  Allah  for  their  return,  and 
swore  by  the  Beard  of  his  Father  that  ere  sun 
rise  they  should  die  the  death  of  cravens,  inas 
much  as  they  had  not  fulfilled  their  duty  satis 
factorily.  He  decided  that  they  should  be  burnt 
with  fire,  and  their  ashes  cast  into  the  waters  of 
the  great  river  — 

"sweeping  down 

Past  carven  pillars^  under  tamarisk  groves 

To  where  the  broad  sea  sparkled" 

"  Kara-Mustapha,"  exclaimed  the  Sultan  to  his 
trusty  vizier,  "I  desire  the  death  of  these  dogs. 
May  their  fathers' graves  be  everlastingly  defiled! 
Let  them  be  burnt  even  as  we  burn  the  bones 
of  the  unclean  beast.  Let  them  be  consumed  in 
the  furnaces  of  thy  kitchen,  that  my  viands  may 
partake  of  a  sweeter  flavor."  And  so  they  died. 
Meanwhile  the  Sultana  repented  of  her  wrath 


140  Letters  to  a  Lady 

against  the  messengers,  and  despatched  a  sable 
eunuch  in  all  haste  to  save  them.  But  the  eunuch 
arrived  before  midday,  while  the  prince  was  yet 
in  his  harem  dreaming  of  satiny-skinned  houris 
and  the  flowers  of  the  valley  of  Nourjahad,  the 
fruits  of  the  golden-leaved  vines  of  Paradise,  and 
the  honeyed  lips  of  the  daughters  of  the  prophet, 
which  make  mad  those  who  kiss  them  with  the 
madness  of  furious  love.  And  the  prince,  being 
aroused  by  his  favorite  odalisque,  lifted  up  his 
eyes  and  beheld  the  eunuch  there  standing  with 
a  message  from  the  Sultana.  And  reading  the 
message  he  fell  from  the  tapestried  couch  upon 
the  floor,  exclaiming,  "May  all  the  Ghouls  de 
vour  my  father's  bones,  and  may  they  tear  and 
devour  me  when  next  I  visit  my  mother's  grave ! 
By  the  beard  of  Allah,  those  messengers  are  not; 
they  have  died  the  dog's  death,  and  have  van 
ished  even  as  the  smoke  of  a  narghile  vanisheth." 
And  a  soft  wind  from  the  sensuous  rosy-skied 
South  toyed  and  caressed  the  volatile  dust  of  the 
bones  of  the  messengers ;  the  dust  fructified  flowers 
of  intoxicating  perfume,  and  the  spirit  of  the  mes 
sengers  melted  into  the  glory  of  Paradise.  There 
is  but  one  God — Mahomet  is  his  prophet. 
[This  is  signed  by  a  crescent  and  with  L  and  H  tnterwoven.~\ 


Letters  to  a  Lady  141 


XII 


DEAR  LADY:  I  felt  glad  for  divers  reasons  on  re 
ceiving  your  letter  and  the  little  parcel, —  firstly, 
because  I  felt  that  you  were  not  very  angry  at 
my  foolish  fable;  and  secondly,  because  I  always 
feel  happy  on  having  something  nice  to  read.  I 
had  already  read  considerable  of  Darwin's  "Voy 
ages;"  but  just  now  I  happened  to  desire  a  work 
of  just  that  kind  in  order  to  educate  myself  in 
regard  to  certain  ethnological  points.  I  accept 
Darwin  fully. 

I  do  not  believe  inGod — neither  god  of  Greece 
nor  of  Rome  nor  any  other  god.  I  do  indeed  re 
vere  Woman  as  the  creator,  and  I  respect — yes,  I 
almost  believe  in — the  graceful  Hellenic  anthro 
pomorphism  which  worshipped  feminine  soft 
ness  and  serpentine  fascination  and  intoxicating 
loveliness  in  the  garb  of  Venus  Anadyomene. 
Yes,  I  could  almost  worship  Aphrodite  arisen, 
were  there  another  renaissance  of  the  antique 
paganism;  and  I  feel  all  through  me  the  spirit  of 
that  exquisite  idolatry  expressed  in  Swinburne's 
ode  to  "Our  Lady  of  Pain."  But  I  do  not  be 
lieve  in  Christ  or  in  Christianity, —  the  former  is 
not  a  grand  character  in  my  eyes,  even  as  a  myth ; 


142  Letters  to  a  Lady 

the  latter  I  abhor  as  antagonistic  to  art,  to  na 
ture,  to  passion,  and  to  justice.  As  Theophile 
Gautier  wrote,  "I  have  never  gathered  passion 
flowers  on  the  rocks  of  Calvary;  and  the  river 
which  flows  from  the  flank  of  the  Cross,  making 
a  crimson  girdle  about  the  world,  has  never 
bathed  me  with  its  waves." 

I  always  take  good  care  of  books,  and  will  re 
turn  these  you  have  so  kindly  lent  me  in  a  week 
or  two. 

Dear  Lady,  I  am  very  anxious  to  be  able  to 
write  that  I  have  a  week's  freedom  or  a  fortnight's 
holiday;  and  I  promise  you  to  let  you  know  as 
soon  as  possible.  But  as  yet  I  cannot  leave  my  dull 
office, — the  convention  keeps  us  awfully  busy. I 
would  see  you  very  often  were  it  possible;  but 
I  never  have  more  than  a  few  hours'  leisure  daily. 

XIII 

I  HAVE  still  your  letter, —  I  fancied  it  might 
be  asked  for  again,  but  I  do  not  like  to  return 
it,  dear  Lady, —  I  had  rather  make  a  Gheber  sa 
crifice,  and  immolate  Eros,  a  smiling  and  willing 
vidtim,  to  the  White  Lord  of  Fire. 

No,  I  did  not  think  the  Sultana  wicked;  for 


Letters  to  a  Lady  143 

I  hold  naught  in  human  aclion  to  be  evil  save 
that  which  brings  sorrow  or  pain  to  others.  But 
even  suppose  the  Sultana  wicked  for  the  sake  of 
argument:  her  pretty  and  yet  needless  apology 
for  the  supposed  mischief  done  was  so  tender, 
delicate,  and  uniquely  fantastic  that  it  would 
have  earned  the  pardons  supplicated  for  by  ten 
thousand  such  peccadilloes.  I  could  not  forget 
it  any  more  than  I  could  forget  the  curves  about 
the  carved  lips  of  the  sweet  Medicean  Venus; 
it  was  a  psychical  blush  of  which  the  peculiar 
ruddiness  made  one  long  to  see  its  twin. 

This  morning  I  found  within  my  room  a  per 
fumed  parcel,  daintily  odorous,  containing  di 
verse  wonderful  things,  including  a  crystal  ves 
sel  of  remarkably  peculiar  design,  very  beautiful 
and  very  foreign.  I  thought  of  filling  it  with  black 
volcanic  wines,  choleric  and  angry  wine,  in  or 
der  to  stimulate  my  resolution  to  the  point  of 
chiding  the  sender  right  severely.  But  the  style 
of  the  vessel  forbade;  it  was  ruddily  clear  in  the 
stained  design,  and  icily  brilliant  elsewhere;  it 
suggested  the  cold  purity  of  a  northern  land, — 
fresh  sea-breezes,  fair  hair,  coolness  of  physical 
temperature.  I  concluded  that  nothing  stronger 
than  good  brown  ale  would  look  at  home  therein; 


144  Letters  to  a  Lady 

and  this  beverage  provoketh  good-nature. 

I  don't  know  how  to  reproach  the  author  of 
this  present  properly.  I  shall  not  attempt  it  now. 
But  I  will  certainly  beg  and  entreat  that  I  may 
not  be  favored  with  any  more  such  kindnesses. 
I  don't  merit  them,  and  feel  the  reverse  of  plea 
sant  by  accepting  them.  Why  I  don't  know,  but 
I  never  like  to  get  presents  some  way  or  other. 
It  is  remarkably  odd  and  pretty;  so  was  the  let 
ter  which  accompanied  it. 


XIV 

DEAR  LADY:  Notwithstanding  your  threat  to 
leave  my  letters  unopened,  I  will  venture  to  write 
you  a  few  lines.  I  think  that  you  have  mis 
judged  me;  and  while  fancying  that  I  was  treat 
ing  you  unkindly,  you  actually  treated  me  some 
what  unfairly, —  without,  of  course,  intending  it. 
You  have  acted  throughout,  or  nearly  so,  upon 
sudden  impulse,  which  was  injudicious  ;and  when 
you  found  me  acting  in  the  opposite  extreme,  the 
necessary  lack  of  sympathy  in  our  actions  prompt 
ed  you  to  believe  that  I  was  "heartless."  Now  I 
can  fully  sympathize  with  your  impulsiveness  be- 


Letters  to  a  Lady  145 

cause  I  have  had  similar  impulses;  but  I  have 
been  forced  to  control  such  impulses  by  the  cau 
tion  learned  of  unpleasant  experiences.  I  will  run 
no  risks  that  could  involve  you  or  me, — especially 
you.  I  did  not  for  one  instant  (and  you  only  as 
serted  the  contrary  through  a  spirit  of  mischievous 
reproach)  think  that  I  could  not  trust  you  with 
my  letters.  But  I  could  not  trust  the  letters.  .  .  . 
I  did  not  accept  your  last  invitation  only  be 
cause  I  could  not:  it  was- of  all  weeks  the  busi 
est.  I  did  not  visit  your  home  yesterday,  because 
I  had  an  assignment  at  the  same  hour  in  the  east 
end5  for  the  purpose  of  examining  a  smoke-con 
sumer.  If  you  had  written  me  the  day  before,  I 
could  have  made  proper  arrangements  to  come. 
You  must  think  me  capable  of  a  little  meanness 
to  suppose  that  I  would  be  discourteous  enough 
to  desire  a  revanche  for  your  impulsive  expres 
sion  of  an  impulse.  I  understand  why  you  re 
turned  my  letter,  and  I  could  not  feel  offended. 


xv 


DEAR  LADY:  You  must  not  ask  me  to  forgive 
you,  because  I  have  nothing  to  forgive;  and  you 


146  Letters  to  a  Lady 

must  not  speak  of  my  being  angry  with  you, 
because  I  was  not  angry  with  you  at  all.  I  wrote 
sharply,  and  perhaps  disagreeably,  because  I  felt 
that  to  do  so  would  most  speedily  relieve  you 
from  your  embarrassment;  and  sympathized  suf 
ficiently  with  your  error  to  suffer  with  you.  I  en 
tered  into  your  feelings  much  more  thoroughly, 
I  believe,  than  you  had  any  idea  of,  and  I  only 
deferred  writing  last  night  because  I  was  fairly 
tired  out  with  hard  work.  I  have  made  many  mis 
takes  similar  to  yours;  and  felt  similar  regrets; 
and  felt  my  face  burn  as  though  pricked  with  ten 
thousand  needles,  even  when  lying  in  bed  in  the 
dark,  to  think  that  a  friend  had  betrayed  some 
tender  little  confidence  which  might  be  turned 
into  sinister  ridicule.  I  was  very,  very  sorry  to 
feel  that  you  had  suffered  similarly. 

So,  dear  Lady,  I  feel  generally  very  reluctant  to 
unbosom  myself  on  paper,  not  knowing  who 
might  behold  the  exposition,  and  sneer  at  it  with 
out  being  capable  of  understanding  it.  Weall  have 
two  natures, — the  one  is  our  every-day  garb  of 
mannerism;  the  other  we  strived  to  keep  draped, 
like  a  snow-limbed  statue  of  Psyche,  half  guarded 
from  unaesthetic  eyes  by  a  semi-diaphanous  veil. 
This  veiled  nature  is  delicate  as  the  wings  of  a 


Letters  to  a  Lady  147 

butterfly,  the  gossamer  web  visible  only  when 
the  sunlight  catches  it,  or  the  frost-flowers  on  a 
window-pane.  It  will  bear  no  rude  touches  —  no 
careless  'handling.  It  is  tenderer  than  the  mythic 
blossom  which  bled  when  plucked,  and  its  very 
tenderness  enhances  its  capacity  for  suffering. 

You  may  hear  many  things  which  on  the  im 
pulse  of  the  moment  might  affect  you  unplea 
santly;  but  you  need  never  yield  to  such  an  im 
pulse.  I  am  very  well  known  in  the  city;  and 
you  might  often  hear  people  speak  of  me,  but 
you  must  not  think  foolish  things,  or  dream  an 
noying  dreams  therefor.  .  .  . 

What  a  funny  little  bundle  of  pretty  contra 
dictions  your  letter  is !  How  can  I  answer  it?  By 
word  of  pen?  No,  not  at  all.  I  must  only  say 
that  I  like  you  quite  as  much — well,  at  least 
nearly  as  much — as  you  say  that  you  wish.  I 
won't  say  "quite,"  because  I  don't  know  myself, 
and  how  can  I  yet  know  you? 

IONIKOE 


XVI 


DEAR  LADY, —  I  remember  having  once   been 
severely  chided  by  a  hoary  friend  of  mine — a 


148  Letters  to  a  Lady 

white-bearded  Mentor — -because  I  had  just  re 
ceived  a  present  from  a  friend,  and  had  impul 
sively  exclaimed,  "Do  tell  me  what  I  shall  give 
him  in  return!"  "Give  in  return!"  quoth  Men 
tor.  "What  for?  —  to  destroy  your  little  obli 
gations  of  gratitude? — to  insult  your  friend  by 
practically  intimating  that  you  believe  he  ex- 
peeled  something  in  return?  Don't  send  him 
anything  save  thanks."  Well,  I  didn't.  But  when 
I  received  your  exquisite  little  gift  this  morning, 
I  thought  of  writing,  "How  can  I  return  your 
kindness,"  &c.;  and  now,  calling  my  old  friend's 
advice  to  mind,  I  shall  only  say,  "Thanks,  dear 
Lady."  Still,  flowers  and  me  [_sii\  have  so  little 
in  common,  that  much  as  I  love  them,  I  feel  I 
ought  not  to  be  near  them, — just  as  one  who 
loves  a  woman  so  passionately  that  his  dearest 
wish  is  to  kiss  her  footprints;  or  as  Kingsley's 
Norseman,  who  threw  himself  at  the  feet  of  the 
fair-haired  priestess,  crying,  "Trample  on  me! 
spit  on  me!  I  am  not  worthy  to  be  trod  upon 
by  your  feet."  Of  course  this  is  an  extravagant 
simile;  but  the  nature  of  a  man  is  so  coarse  and 
rude  compared  with  the  fragrance  and  beauty  of 
the  flowers,  that  he  feels  in  a  purer  atmosphere 
when  they  are  breathing  perfume  about  him. 


Letters  to  a  Lady  149 

Flowers  do  seem  to  me  like  ghosts  of  maidens, 
like  "that  maid  whom  Gwydion  made  by  gla 
mour  out  of  flowers." 

Just  fancy!  —  I  was  smoking  a  very  poor  ci 
gar  when  the  basket  of  blossoms  came  up  to  my 
rooms;  and  the  odor  of  tobacco  in  the  presence 
of  the  flowers  seemed  sacrilegious.  I  felt  like  the 
toad  in  Edgar  Fawcett's  poem.  Perhaps  you  do 
not  know  that  little  poem,  as  it  has  not  yet  been 
published  in  book  form.  So  I  will  quote  it;  but 
do  not  think  me  sentimental. 

"To  A  TOAD 

"  Blue  dusk,  that  brings  the  dewy  hours, 
Brings  thee,  of  grace/ess  form  in  sooth, 
Dark  stumbler  at  the  roots  of  flowers, 
Flaccid,  inert,  uncouth. 

"Right  ill  can  human  wonder  guess 
Thy  meaning  or  thy  mission  here, 
Gray  lump  of  mottled  clam?niness  — 
With  that  preposterous  leer! 

"But  when  I  see  thy  dull  bulk  where 
Luxurious  roses  bend  and  burn, 
Or  some  slim  lily  lifts  to  air 
Her  frail  and  fragrant  urn, — 


150  Letters  to  a  Lady 


?,  among  the  garden  ways, 
So  grim  a  watcher  dost  thou  seem 
That  I,  with  meditative  gaze 
Look  down  on  thee  and  dream 

1  Of  thick-lipped  slaves,  with  ebon 
That  squat  in  hideous  dumb  repose 
And  guard  the  drowsy  ladies  in 
Their  still  seraglios" 


And  talking  of  little  roses,  luxurious  roses,  I  like 
them  because  of  the  fancies  they  evoke;  their 
leaves  and  odor  seem  of  kinship  to  the  lips  and 
the  breath  of  a  fair  woman, —  the  lips  of  a  woman 
humid  with  fresh  kisses  as  the  heart  of  the  rose  is 
humid  with  dews, — lips  curled  like  the  petals  of 
the  pink  flower,  recalling  those  of  Swinburne's 
"Faustine" 

"Curled  lips,  long  since  half  kissed  away, 
Still  sweet  and  keen" 

Dear  lady,  you  sent  me  a  very  aesthetic  pre 
sent;  and  I  fear  I  have  written  you  a  very  sen 
timental  letter.  But  if  you  don't  want  such  effu 
sions,  you  must  not  send  me  such  flowers.  I  re 
ceived  your  last  few  lines,  and  feel  much  relieved 
to  find  I  have  not  offended  you  by  my  foolish 


Letters  to  a  Lady  151 

letter.  I  cannot  sit  down  late  at  night  without 
saying  something  outrageous ;  and  I  must  be  pos 
sessed  by  the  Devil  of  Heterophemy. 

Very  sincerely  yours, 

L.  HEARN 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

"A  FTER  this  perhaps  you  will  recognize  the 
Ji\.  signature  OZIAS  MIDWINTER.  It  was  taken 
from  Wilkie  Collins's  'Armadale.'"  This  brief 
postal-card  message  to  his  friend,  Mr.  Henry 
Watkin,  written  from  New  Orleans,  November 
15,1 877,  is  the  valuable  clue  that  leads  to  a  dis 
covery  of  a  vein  of  work  done  by  Lafcadio  Hearn, 
— work  that  perhaps  in  after  years  he  came  to 
scorn,  if  not  to  forget.  But  for  this  information, 
imparted  to  a  friend  by  Hearn  himself,  the  "Let 
ters  of  Ozias  Midwinter"  would  doubtless  lie  un 
disturbed  in  their  dusty  tomb, —  the  files  of  the 
newspaper  of  yester-year.There  may  be  those  who 
will  decry  this  resurrection  of  forgotten  things; 
who  will  say  it  was  the  hack-work  of  a  starving 
man;  that  it  were  better  left  undisturbed.  They 
have  a  right  to  their  opinion.  Nevertheless,  with 
due  respect  to  them,  there  are  things  in  these 
letters  as  good  as  anything  Hearn  ever  wrote. 
More  than  that,  they  reveal  the  whole  trend  of 
his  mind;  they  foreshadow  the  things  that  were 
to  interest  him  in  the  West  Indies  and  in  Japan, 
—  the  little  mysteries  of  life,  the  poetry  of  names, 
the  melody  of  folk-songs,  the  fascination  of  old 


156   Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

things.  The  very  adoption  of  the  name  of  Ozias 
Midwinter  is  significant.  Already  at  twenty-seven 
Hearn  was  too  true  a  critic  of  real  literature  to 
imagine  for  a  moment  that  "Armadale"  was  a 
book  that  was  worth  while;  but  there  were  things 
in  this  practically  forgotten  story  that  appealed 
to  him  with  peculiar  force,  things  that  to  him 
seemed  almost  as  if  they  might  have  been  writ 
ten  concerning  himself.  Hearn  at  times  felt  that 
his  very  name  was  ugly.  In  "Armadale"  we  read, 
"the  strangely  uncouth  name  of  Ozias  Mid 
winter;"  and  again :  "  It  is  so  remarkably  ugly  that 
it  must  be  genuine.  No  sane  human  being  would 
assume  such  a  name  as  Ozias  Midwinter." 

His  diminutive  appearance  was  a  sore  point 
with  Hearn.  "Armadale"  depicts  Midwinter  as 
"young  and  slim  and  undersized." 

There  was  something  foreign-looking  about 
Hearn.  His  fictional  hero  was  thus  described: 
"His  tawny  complexion,  his  large  bright  brown 
eyes,  and  his  black  beard  gave  him  something 
of  a  foreign  look.  .  .  .  His  dusky  hands  were 
wiry  and  nervous." 

Hearn,  by  reason  of  the  peculiar  appearance 
of  his  eyes,  more  often  repelled  than  attracted 
people.  He  could  therefore  sympathize  with 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    157 

Midwinter,  who  says : "  I  produced  a  disagreeable 
impression  at  first  sight.  I  couldn't  mend  it  after 
wards." 

A  few  more  quotations  will  complete  the  pic 
ture  and  further  make  clear  the  fascination  this 
character  in  a  poor  novel  had  for  Hearn.  The 
latter  was  from  the  start  remarkably  shy.  He 
avoided  the  generality  of  men.  For  years  he  had 
been  a  failure  in  life.  Everything  he  had  tried 
had  somehow  fallen  far  below  his  expectations. 
Indeed,  at  the  very  time  he  was  writing  the  Mid 
winter  letters  he  was  tramping  the  streets,  going 
from  newspaper  office  to  office  in  New  Orleans 
seeking  work.  Let  us  see  now  how  these  things 
in  the  life  of  Hearn  correspond  with  the  descrip 
tion  of  Midwinter:  "From  first  to  last  the  man's 
real  character  shrank  back  with  a  savage  shyness 
from  the  rector's  touch." 

And  again:  "It  mattered  little  what  he  tried: 
failure  (for  which  nobody  was  ever  to  blame  but 
himself)  was  sure  to  be  the  end  of  it,  sooner  or 
later.  Friends  to  assist  him  he  had  none  to  ap 
ply  to;  and  as  for  relations,  he  wished  to  be  ex 
cused  from  speaking  of  them.  For  all  he  knew 
of  them  they  might  be  dead,  and  for  all  they 
knew  he  might  be  dead." 


158    Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

Andfinally : "  Ozias  Midwinter  at  twenty  spoke 
of  his  life  as  Ozias  Midwinter  at  seventy  might 
have  spoken,  with  a  long  weariness  of  years  on 
him  which  he  had  learned  to  bear  patiently." 

So  much  for  the  pseudonym.  Now  for  the  work 
to  which  it  was  attached.  In  after  years,  when 
Hearn  had  begun  to  attain  a  degree  of  prospe 
rity,  he  either  forgot  something  of  the  hard  days, 
or,  for  some  reason  known  to  himself,  told  a 
pleasing  fiftion  about  them.  Thus,  in  one  letter 
that  was  made  public  shortly  after  his  death,  he 
says  he  went  South  from  Cincinnati  on  a  vaca- 
tion,saw  the  blue  and  gold  of  Southern  days,  and 
determined  to  abide  in  such  a  climate  forever.  It 
has  already  been  made  clear  in  his  letters  to  Mr. 
Watkin  that  he  went  South  because  the  wander 
lust was  upon  him,  because  he  had  begun  to  hate 
Cincinnati,  because  he  felt  that  he  must  find  more 
congenial  work  elsewhere.  Whatever  enthusiasts 
in  Cincinnati  and  New  Orleans  may  say  now,  he 
was  not  a  good  reporter  in  the  present-day  ac 
ceptance  of  the  term.  There  was,  on  his  part,  a 
fancy  for  fine  writing,  for  rhetoric,  which  the 
city  editors  of  three  decades  ago  may  have  ad 
mired,  but  which  at  present  would  be  most  vi 
gorously  blue-pencilled.  A  youthful  Hearn  to- 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    159 

day  would  have  a  rather  hard  time  in  Cincinnati, 
where  the  cry  is  for  facts  and  again  facts,  and  then 
for  brevity  and  then  once  more  for  brevity.  If 
Hearn  did  not  come  up  to  the  modern  standards 
of  newspaper  reporting,  neither  did  he  come  up 
to  the  modern  ideals  of  newspaper  correspond 
ence.  It  is  probable  that  few  papers  to-day  would 
tolerate  the  particular  kind  of  "news  letter"  that 
Hearn  sent  to  the  Cincinnati  Commercial  in  the 
years  1877  and  1878.  It  was  in  a  day  when  the 
telegraph  service  was  not  so  well  developed  as  at 
present,  and  the  news  letters  from  Washington, 
Boston,  New  York,  New  Orleans,  and  London 
were  a  regular  feature.  There  are  few  newspapers 
to-day  which  contain  letters  by  men  so  eminent 
in  after  years  as  two  of  the  Commercial  corre 
spondents  became, — Hearn  and  Moncure  D. 
Conway,  also  for  some  time  a  resident  of  Cin 
cinnati  and  afterwards  correspondent  from  Lon 
don. 

Few  if  any  of  H  earn 's  "  news  letters  "  made  any 
pretence  at  giving  news.  As  far  as  the  style  of 
them  was  concerned,  they  might  have  been  writ 
ten  for  his  friend  Watkin  alone,  instead  of  for  a 
great  Ohio  valley  newspaper,  catering  to  a  con 
siderable  clientele.  He  chose  what  subjects  inter- 


160   Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

ested  him,  not  what  were  presumed  to  interest 
the  readersof  the  paper.  Indays  when  Louisiana's 
political  affairs  were  still  in  the  turmoil  of  the 
reconstruction  period,  when  the  North  was  still 
keenly  watching  events  in  the  "rebel"  South, 
Hearn  had  few  if  any  references  to  these  matters. 

As  near  an  approach  as  any  to  a  news  letter  was 
his  first  one,  sent  from  Memphis,  November  6, 
1877,  when  he  wrote  some  "Notes  on  Forrest's 
Funeral/'  In  this  he  related  how  he  saw  the  fu 
neral  of  General  N.  B.  Forrest,  the  great  Con 
federate  cavalryman,  told  some  anecdotes  of  the 
dead  man's  bravery  and  savagery,  and  gave  his 
ancestry  and  an  outline  of  his  life. 

Then  he  proceeded:  "Old  citizens  of  Mem 
phis  mildly  described  him  to  me  as  a c  terror.'  He 
would  knock  a  man  down  upon  the  least  provo 
cation,  and  whether  with  or  without  weapons, 
there  were  few  people  in  the  city  whom  he  could 
not  worst  in  a  fight.  Imagine  a  man  about  six 
feet  three  inches  in  height,  very  sinewy  and  ac 
tive,  with  a  vigorous,  rugged  face,  bright  grey 
eyes  that  almost  always  look  fierce,  eyebrows 
that  seem  always  on  the  verge  of  a  frown,  and 
dark  brown  hair  and  chin  beard,  with  strong 
inclination  to  curl,  and  you  have  some  idea  of 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    161 

Forrest's  appearance  before  his  last  illness.  He 
was,  further,  one  of  the  most  arbitrary,  imperious, 
and  determined  men  that  it  is  possible  to  con 
ceive  of  holding  a  high  position  in  a  civilized 
community.  Rough,  rugged,  desperate,  uncul 
tured,  his  character  fitted  him  rather  for  the  life  of 
the  borderer  than  the  planter;  he  seemed  by  nature 
a  typical  pioneer, — one  of  those  fierce  and  ter 
rible  men  who  form  in  themselves  a  kind  of  pro 
tecting  fringe  to  the  borders  of  white  civilization." 
This  is  straightforward  and  vivid  enough.  But 
it  was  impossible  for  this  dreamer  of  weird  dreams 
to  go  through  a  whole  letter  in  this  fashion,  and 
so  we  have  the  following,  which,  well  written  as  it 
is,  would  scandalize  the  modern  telegraph  editor 
handling  the  correspondence:  "The  same  night 
they  buried  him,  there  came  a  storm.  From  the 
same  room  whence  I  had  watched  the  funeral,  I 
saw  the  Northern  mists  crossing  the  Mississippi 
into  Arkansas  like  an  invading  army;  then  came 
grey  rain,  and  at  last  a  fierce  wind,  making  wild 
charges  through  it  all.  Somehow  or  other  the 
queer  fancy  came  to  me  that  the  dead  Confederate 
cavalrymen,  rejoined  by  their  desperate  leader, 
were  fighting  ghostly  battles  with  the  men  who 
died  for  the  Union." 


1 62   Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

The  hustling,  bustling  Memphis  of  to-day 
is  a  far  different  place  from  the  decayed,  war- 
stricken  town  that  the  vagrant  newspaper  man 
saw.  Its  ruin,  its  damp  days  and  nights,  depressed 
him.  In  a  letter  of  November  23,  1877,  he  re 
corded  his  impressions  in  a  way  that  would  doubt 
less  to-day  appeal  strongly  to  the  memory  of  the 
older  generation  of  Memphians,  who  have  not 
become  used  to  the  new  order  of  things: 

"The  antiquity  of  the  name  of  Memphis  — 
a  name  suggesting  vastness  and  ruin — compels 
something  of  a  reverential  feeling;  and  I  ap 
proached  the  Memphis  of  the  Mississippi  dream 
ing  solemnly  of  the  Memphis  of  the  Nile.  I 
found  the  great  cotton  mart  truly  Egyptian  in 
its  melancholy  decay,  and  not,  therefore,  wholly 
unworthy  of  its  appellation.  Tenantless  ware 
houses  with  shattered  windows; poverty-stricken 
hotels  that  vainly  strive  to  keep  up  appearances; 
rows  of  once  splendid  buildings,  from  whose  fa- 
9ades  the  paint  has  almost  all  scaled  off;  mock 
stone  fronts,  whence  the  stucco  has  fallen  in 
patches,  exposing  the  humble  brick  reality  un 
derneath  ;dinginess,  dirt,  and  dismal  dilapidation 
greet  the  eye  at  every  turn.  The  city's  life  seems 
to  have  contracted  about  its  heart,  leaving  the 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    163 

greater  portion  of  its  body  paralyzed.  Its  com 
mercial  pulse  appears  to  beat  very  feebly.  It  gives 
one  the  impression  of  a  place  that  had  been 
stricken  by  some  great  misfortune  beyond  hope 
of  recovery.  Yet  Memphis  still  handles  one  fifth 
of  the  annual  cotton  crop, — often  more  than  a 
million  bales  in  a  season, — and  in  this  great 
branch  of  commerce  the  city  will  always. hold 
its  own,  though  fine  buildings  crumble  and  debts 

accumulate  and  warehouses  lie  vacant But 

when  rain  and  white  fogs  come,  the  melancholy 
of  Memphis  becomes  absolutely  Stygian:  all 
things  wooden  utter  strange  groans  and  crac 
kling  sounds;  all  things  of  stone  or  of  stucco 
sweat  as  in  the  agony  of  dissolution,  and  beyond 
the  cloudy  brow  of  the  bluffs  the  Mississippi  flows 
dimly, — a  spectral  river,  a  Styx-flood,  with  pale 
mists  lingering  like  Shades  upon  its  banks,  wait 
ing  for  that  ghostly  ferryman,  the  wind." 

In  this  letter  occurred  a  quaint  passage,  illus- 
tratingat  the  same  time  the  wide  range  of  Hearn's 
reading  and  the  curious  paths  into  which  he  had 
allowed  his  mind  to  stray:  "Elagabalus,  wish 
ing  to  obtain  some  idea  of  the  vastness  of  impe 
rial  Rome,  ordered  all  the  cobwebs  in  the  city 
to  be  collected  together  and  heaped  up  before 


1 64    Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

him.  Estimated  by  such  a  method,  the  size  of 
Memphis  would  appear  vast  enough  to  have  as 
tonished  even  Elagabalus." 

However,  brief  as  was  his  stay  in  Memphis, 
disagreeable  as  were  most  of  his  impressions,  he 
found  time  to  fall  in  love  with  one  little  piece 
of  sculpture,  thus  charmingly  described  as  "a  lit 
tle  nude  Venus  at  the  street  fountain,  who  has 
become  all  of  one  dusky  greyish-green  hue, 
preserving  her  youth  only  in  the  beauty  of  her 
rounded  figure  and  unwrinkled  comeliness  of 
face."  In  this  letter  he  detailed  something  of  his 
journey  down  the  river,  chronicled  his  delight 
in  the  Southern  sunsets,  and  finally  arrived  at  the 
first  of  his  promised  lands:  "The  daylight  faded 
away,  and  the  stars  came  out,  but  that  warm  glow 
in  the  southern  horizon  only  paled  so  that  it 
seemed  a  little  further  off.  The  river  broadened 
till  it  looked,  with  the  tropical  verdure  of  its 
banks,  like  the  Ganges,  until  at  last  there  loomed 
up  a  vast  line  of  shadows,  dotted  with  points  of 
light,  and  through  a  forest  of  masts  and  a  host 
of  phantom-white  river  boats  and  a  wilderness  of 
chimneys  the  'Thompson  Dean,  singing  her  cheery 
challenge,  steamed  up  to  the  mighty  levee  of 
New  Orleans." 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    165 

In  his  next  letter,  dated  November  26,  1877, 
he  described  his  first  impressions  "at  the  gates 
of  the  Tropics."  He  came  across  things  that  re 
minded  him  of  London  and  of  Paris  and  evoked 
memories  of  his  youth: 

"  Eighteen  miles  of  levee !  London,  with  all  the 
gloomy  vastness  of  her  docks  and  her  c river  of 
ten  thousand  masts/  can  offer  no  spectacle  so 
picturesquely  attractive  and  so  varied  in  the  at 
traction."  And  again  : "  Canal  Street,  with  its  grand 
breadth  and  imposing  fa9ades,  gives  one  recol 
lections  of  London  and  Oxford  Street  and  Re 
gent  Street."  He  went  to  the  French  market, 
still  one  of  the  great  sights  of  the  city,  and  could 
not  write  enough  about  it: 

"The  markets  of  London  are  less  brightly 
clean  and  neatly  arranged;  the  markets  of  Paris 
are  less  picturesque."  Even  a  cotton-press  seen 
at  the  cotton  landing  was  an  event  to  be  cele 
brated.  The  thing  was  to  him  not  merely  a  piece 
of  ingenious  machinery  ;  it  was  something  weird, 
something  demoniac:  "Fancy  a  monstrous  head 
of  living  iron  and  brass,  fifty  feet  high  from  its 
junction  with  the  ground,  having  jointed  gaps  in 
its  face  like  Gothic  eyes,  a  mouth  five  feet  wide, 
opening  six  feet  from  the  mastodon  teeth  in  the 


166    Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

lower  jaw  to  the  mastodon  teeth  in  the  upper 
jaw.  The  lower  jaw  alone  moves,  as  in  living  be 
ings,  and  it  is  worked  by  two  vast  iron  tendons, 
long  and  thick  and  solid  as  church  pillars.  The 
surface  of  this  lower  jaw  is  equivalent  to  six 
square  feet.  The  more  I  looked  at  the  thing,  the 
more  I  felt  as  though  its  prodigious  anatomy  had 
been  studied  after  the  anatomy  of  some  extinct 
animal, —  the  way  those  jaws  worked,  the  man 
ner  in  which  those  muscles  moved.  Men  rolled 
a  cotton  bale  to  the  mouth  of  the  monster.  The 
jaws  opened  with  a  low  roar,  and  so  remained. 
The  lower  jaw  had  descended  to  the  level  with 
the  platform  on  which  the  balewas  lying.  It  was  an 
immense  plantation  bale.  Two  black  men  rolled 
it  into  the  yawning  mouth.  The  titan  muscles 
contracted,  and  the  jaws  closed,  silently,  steadily, 
swiftly.  The  bale  flattened,  flattened,  flattened 
down  to  sixteen  inches,  twelve  inches,  eight 
inches,  five  inches, —  positively  less  than  five 
inches!  I  thought  it  was  going  to  disappear  al 
together.  But  after  crushing  it  beyond  five  inches 
the  jaw  remained  stationary  and  the  monster 
growled  like  rumbling  thunder.  I  thought  the 
machine  began  to  look  as  hideous  as  one  of  those 
horrible  yawning  heads  which  formed  the  gates 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    167 

of  the  teocallis  at  Palenque,  and  through  whose 
awful  jaws  the  sacrificial  victims  passed/* 

On  December  7,  1877,  he  dived  into  more  se 
rious  and  even  more  practical  things.  This  man, 
to  whom  colored  races  were  always  of  the  deep 
est  interest,  who  had  prowled  around  the  negro 
quarters  ofCincinnati  for  songs  and  melodies  and 
superstitions,  around  the  Chinese  laundries  for 
chance  discoveries  of  strange  musical  instruments 
from  the  Orient,  after  a  residence  in  the  South 
of  one  month,  discussed  a  question  which  is  still 
agitating  the  country  and  which  threatens  to 
trouble  it  for  many  years  to  come,  —  the  negro 
question.  Charles  Gayarre  of  Louisiana  had  writ 
ten  an  article  for  the  North  American  Review  en 
titled  "The  Southern  Question/'  Hearn,  who 
certainly  cannot  be  accused  of  prejudice  against 
colored  peoples,  agreed  with  the  Southern  writer 
that  white  supremacy  was  necessary  for  Southern 
peace  and  prosperity.  He  felt  that  the  particular 
menace  of  the  whites  was  from  the  mixed  breeds, 
whose  black  blood  had  just  enough  alloy  to  make 
them  despise  the  simplicity  and  faithfulness  of 
the  lowly  "darky"  of  the  old  regime  and  aspire 
to  more  rights  and  more  privileges.  Recently  a 
Southern  thinker  has  written  a  book  to  show  that, 


1 68   Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

in  the  inexorable  law  of  the  survival  of  the  fit 
test,  the  ten  million  negroes  must  be  swept  aside 
by  the  seventy  million  whites  of  this  land,  and 
finally  perish  from  the  face  of  the  earth,  as  do 
all  the  weaker  races.  Nearly  three  decades  ago 
Hearn  came  to  the  same  conclusion, —  a  conclu 
sion  not  expressed  without  some  feeling  of  fond 
ness  for  the  race:  "As  for  the  black  man,  he 
must  disappear  with  the  years.  Dependent  like 
the  ivy,  he  needs  some  strong  oak-like  friend  to 
cling  to.  His'  support  has  been  cut  from  him,  and 
his  life  must  wither  in  its  prostrate  helplessness. 
Will  he  leave  no  trace  of  his  past  in  the  fields 
made  fertile  by  his  mighty  labors,  no  memory 
of  his  presence  in  this  fair  land  he  made  rich  in 
vain  ?  Ah,yes !  the  echo  of  the  sweetly  melancholy 
songs  of  slavery, — the  weird  and  beautiful  melo 
dies  born  in  the  hearts  of  the  poor,  childlike  peo 
ple  to  whom  freedom  was  destruction." 

By  the  time  he  sent  his  next  letter,  dated 
December  10,  1877,  he  had  again  been  wander 
ing  about  the  city.  He  visited  the  old  Spanish 
cathedral  founded  by  Don  Andre  Almonaster, 
Regidor  and  Alferez  Real  of  his  Most  Catholic 
Majesty.  This  is  the  church  that  is  always  re 
ferred  to  as  the  "French  cathedral."  Hearn  de- 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    169 

scribed  its  two  ancient  tombs, — that  of  Almon- 
aster,  who  died  in  1708,  and  then  that  of  the 
French  noble  family  of  De  Marigny  de  Mande- 
ville,  scions  of  which  died  and  were  buried  there 
in  1728,  1779,  and  1800.  Hearn  had  his  own 
reflections  over  the  matter  just  as  Irving  had  in 
Westminster  Abbey: 

"O  Knights  of  the  Ancient  Regime,  the  feet 
of  the  plebeians  are  blotting  out  your  escutch 
eons;  the  overthrowers  of  throned  Powers  pass 
by  your  tombs  with  a  smile  of  complacency ;  the 
callous  knees  of  the  poorest  poor  will  erelong 
obliterate  your  carven  memory  from  the  stone; 
the  very  places  of  your  dwelling  have  crumbled 
out  of  sight  and  out  of  remembrance.  The  glory 
of  Versailles  has  passed  away;  cthe  spider  taketh 
hold  with  his  hands,  and  is  in  the  palaces  of 
Kings.'" 

From  musings  in  the  cathedral  he  passed  in 
to  a  disquisition  on  language.  He  held  that  the 
French  tongue  sounded  better  to  him  from  the 
mouth  of  a  negro  than  did  the  harsher  English. 
Southern  speech  flows  melodiously  from  the  ne 
gro's  lips, being  musically  akin  to  the  many-vow- 
elled  languages  of  Africa.  The  th*s  and  thr'sy  the 
difficult  diphthongs  and  guttural  rr's  of  Eng- 


1 70   Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

lish  and  German,  have  a  certain  rude  Northern 
strength  beyond  the  mastery  of  Ethiopian  lips. 
He  finds  that  the  Louisiana  blacks  speak  a  cor 
rupted  French,  often  called  "  Creole/'  which  is 
not  the  Creole  of  the  Antilles.  This  recalls  to  him 
a  memory  of  his  childhood  in  England  and  gives 
also  a  foretaste  of  what  he  was  to  do  ten  years 
later,  when  Harpers  gave  him  a  chance  to  describe 
what  he  felt  and  saw  in  the  French  West  Indies: 
"Yesterday  evening,  the  first  time  for  ten 
years,  I  heard  again  that  sweetest  of  all  dialects, 
the  Creole  of  the  Antilles.  I  had  first  heard  it 
spoken  in  England  by  the  children  of  an  Eng 
lish  family  from  Trinidad,  who  were  visiting  re 
latives  in  the  mother  country,  and  I  could  never 
forget  its  melody.  In  Martinique  and  elsewhere 
it  has  almost  a  written  dialect;  the  school-children 
used  to  study  the c  Creole  catechism/  and  priests 
used  to  preach  to  their  congregations  in  Creole. 
You  cannot  help  falling  in  love  with  it  after  hav 
ing  once  heard  it  spoken  by  young  lips,  unless 
indeed  you  have  no  poetry  in  your  composition, 
no  music  in  your  soul.  It  is  the  most  liquid,  mel 
low,  languid  language  in  the  world.  It  is  espe 
cially  a  language  for  love-making.  It  sounds  like 
pretty  baby-talk;  it  woos  like  the  cooing  of  a 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    171 

dove.  It  seems  to  be  a  mixture  of  French,  a  little 
Spanish,  and  West  African  dialects, — those  ne 
gro  dialects  that  are  voluminous  with  vowels. 
You  can  imagine  how  smooth  it  is  from  the  fact 
that  in  West  Indian  Creole  the  letter  r  is  never 
pronounced;  and  the  Europeans  of  the  Indies 
complain  that  once  their  children  have  learned 
to  speak  Creole,  it  is  hard  to  teach  them  to  pro 
nounce  any  other  language  correctly.  They  will 
say £  b'ed'  for  bread  and  ct'ed'  for  thread.  So  that 
it  is  a  sort  of  wopsy-popsy-ootsy-tootsy  lan 
guage." 

And  from  this  affectionate  passage  he  is  led  to 
speak  of  Creole  satires.  During  the  Republican 
regime  in  New  Orleans  after  the  Civil  War  there 
was  a  witty,  bitter,  and  brilliant  French  paper 
called  Le  Carillon,  which  designated  Republicans 
by  a  new  term, "  Radicanailles,"  which  seemed  ex 
ceedingly  satisfying  to  the  proud  aristocracy, — 
this  word  compounded  of  "radical"  and  "ca 
naille."  The  paper  used  to  print  Creole  satires. 
One  was  on  ex-Governor  Antoine,  in  the  form 
of  a  parody  upon  "La  Fille  de  Madame  An- 
got."  Now  Hearn's  ambition  was  to  write  a  sinu 
ous,  silvern,  poetical  prose.  He  rarely  attempted 
verse.  In  his  better  known  books  on  Japan  his 


172   Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

versions  of  Japanese  songs  and  poems  are  in 
prose.  So,  too,  in  these  letters  all  his  renderings 
of  the  things  that  attracted  him  are  in  prose. 
Here  is  his  version  of  the  satire  just  mentioned, 
redolent  as  it  is  of  an  era  of  bitterness: 


"In  the  old  days  before  the  war,  I  was  a  slave 
at  Caddo  [Parish] .  I  tilled  the  earth  and  raised 
sweet  potatoes  and  water-melons.  Then  after 
wards  I  left  the  plough  and  took  up  the  razor 
to  shave  folks  in  the  street, — white  and  black, 
too.  But  that,  that  was  before  the  war. 

ii 

"When  Banks  went  up  the  river  (Red  River) 
with  soldiers  and  with  cannon,  I  changed  my 
career.  Then  I  became  a  runaway  slave.  I  mar 
ried  my  own  cousin,  who  is  at  this  hour  my  wife. 
She — she  attended  to  the  kitchen.  I  —  I  sought 
for  honors.  But  that,  that  was  during  the  war. 

in 

"And  then  afterward  in  the  custom-house  men 
called  me  Collector;  and  then  Louisiana  named 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    173 

me  her  Senator;  and  then  to  show  her  confidence 
the  people  made  me  Governor  and  called  me  His 
Eminence;  and  that  is  what  I  am  at  this  present 
hour.  And  that,  that  is  since  the  war." 

From  this,  with  the  inconsequential  air  of  a  but 
terfly,  he  turned  to  the  subject  of  the  Greeks  of 
New  Orleans, — a  subject  that  must  have  lain  near 
to  his  heart  by  reason  of  the  deep  love  he  bore 
for  his  Greek  mother.  Among  the  New  Orleans 
people  he  mentioned  was  one  Greek  gentleman: 
"  I  never  met  a  finer  old  man.  Though  more  than 
seventy  years  of  age,  his  face  was  still  as  firmly 
outlined,  as  clearly  cut,  as  an  antique  cameo;  its 
traits  recalled  memories  of  old  marbles,  portraits 
in  stone  of  Aristophanes  and  Sophocles;  it  be 
spoke  a  grand  blending  of  cynicism  and  poetry." 
But  the  sons  of  Hellas  were  not  all  alike  sat 
isfactory  to  his  fastidious  taste:  "There  are  many 
Greeks,  sailors  and  laborers,  in  New  Orleans;  but 
I  cannot  say  that  they  inspire  one  with  dreams 
of  Athens  or  of  Corinth,  of  Panathenaic  proces 
sions  or  Panhellenic  games.  Their  faces  are  not 
numismatic;  their  forms  are  not  athletic.  Some 
times  you  can  discern  a  something  national  about 
a  Greek  steamboatman, — a  something  charac- 


174   Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

teristic  which  distinguishes  him  from  the  equally 
swarthy  Italian,  Spaniard/ Dago/  But  that  some 
thing  is  not  of  antiquity;  it  is  not  inspirational. 
It  is  Byzantine,  and  one  is  apt  to  dislike  it.  It  re 
minds  one  of  Taine's  merciless  criticism  of  the 
faces  of  Byzantine  art.  But  I  have  seen  a  few  rare 
Hellenic  types  here,  and  amongthese  some  beau 
tiful  Romaic  girls, —  maidens  with  faces  to  remind 
you  of  the  gracious  vase  paintings  of  antiquity." 
One  would  think  he  had  crammed  this  letter  full 
enough  of  topics,  but  he  had  one  more.  Through 
out  his  life  ghost  stories  were  an  obsession  with 
him.  They  run  all  through  his  books  on  Japan. 
Three  decades  ago  he  lamented:  "In  these  days 
ghosts  have  almost  lost  the  power  to  interest  us, 
forwe  have  become  too  familiarwith  their  cloudy 
faces,  and  familiarity  begetteth  contempt.  An  ori 
ginal  ghost  story  is  a  luxury,  and  a  rare  luxury 
at  that." 

He  then  toldof  a  house  on  Melpomene  Street, 
New  Orleans,  in  which  no  one  could  dwell  in 
peace.  If  a  person  were  so  hardy  and  so  skepti 
cal  as  to  move  in,  he  soon  found  his  furniture 
scattered,  and  his  carpets  torn  up  by  invisible 
hands.  Ghostly  feet  shook  the  house  with  their 
terrible  steps;  ghostly  hands  opened  bolted  doors 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    175 

as  if  locks  did  not  exist, — so  that  by  and  by  no 
one  came  to  live  in  the  old  place  any  more: 

"As  the  years  flitted  by  the  goblin  of  Decay 
added  himself  to  the  number  of  the  Haunters; 
the  walls  crumbled,  and  the  floors  yielded,  and 
grass,  livid  and  ghastly  looking  grass,  forced  its 
pale  way  between  the  chinks  of  the  planks  in  the 
parlor.  The  windows  fell  into  ruin,  and  the  wind 
entered  freely  to  play  with  the  ghosts,  and  cried 
weirdly  in  the  vacant  room." 

Then  one  night  Chief  of  Police  Leary  and  six 
of  his  most  stalwart  men  determined  to  stand 
watch  in  the  building  and  solve  the  mystery. 
They  placed  candles  in  one  of  the  rooms,  and 
towards  midnight  stood  in  a  hollow  square,  with 
Chief  Leary  in  the  middle,  so  that  he  could  aid 
his  men  to  repel  an  attack  from  any  quarter  what 
soever.  The  ghosts  blew  out  the  lighted  candles 
and,  to  this  extent,  were  commonplace  enough. 
But  the  next  instant  they  displayed  their  com 
plete  ingenuity  and  originality  by  seizing  the 
seven  guardians  of  the  peace  and  hurling  them 
violently  against  the  ceiling.  Hearn  adds,  with  a 
touch  of  playful  humor:  "The  city  of  New  Or 
leans  would  not  pay  the  doctors'  bills  of  men  in 
jured  while  in  the  discharge  of  their  duty." 


176   Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

By  December  17,  1877,  he  had  become  inter 
ested  in  the  past  and  present  of  "  Los  Criollos," 
the  Creoles,  who  were  to  be  such  a  fascinating 
subject  to  him  when  he  visited  Martinique  and 
other  enchanted  isles  of  the  Caribbean. 

In  this  first  letter  on  the  subject  he  corrected 
the  common  error  of  speaking  of  mulattoes, 
quadroons,  and  octaroons  of  Louisiana  as  Cre 
oles, —  a  mistake  which  curiously  enough  he  him 
self  made  in  his  book,  "Ghombo  Zhebes,"  sev 
eral  years  later.  In  this  letter,  however,  he  cor- 
re6tly  pointed  out  that  no  person  with  the  slight 
est  taint  of  negro  blood  was  a  Creole,  and  that 
the  common  mistake  was  made  not  only  in  the 
North,  but  also  often  in  the  South,  where  they 
should  know  better;  not  only  in  America,  but 
also  in  England,  France,  and  Spain,  the  former 
mother  countries  of  all  the  West  Indian  colo 
nists.  "  Creole/'  properly  speaking,  is  the  term  ap 
plied  to  the  pure-blooded  offspring  of  Europeans 
born  in  the  colonies  of  South  America  or  the 
West  Indies,  to  distinguish  them  from  children 
of  mixed  blood  born  in  the  colonies  or  of  pure 
blood  born  in  the  mother  country.  In  Louisiana, 
he  pointed  out  that  it  usually  meant  they  were  of 
French,  more  rarely  of  Spanish,  descent.  He  paid 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    177 

a  tribute  to  the  Creole  society  of  New  Orleans 
which  was  made  up  of  the  descendants  of  all  the 
early  European  settlers:  "Something  of  all  that 
was  noble  and  true  and  brilliant  in  the  almost 
forgotten  life  of  the  dead  South  lives  here  still 
(its  atmosphere  is  European ;  its  tastes  are  gov 
erned  by  European  literature  and  the  art  culture 
of  the  Old  World)."  He  then  quoted  some  of  the 
poems  in  the  patois  of  Louisiana  and  also  some 
from  Martinique  that  he  had  already  picked  up. 

On  December  22,  he  devoted  his  attention  to 
"  New  Orleans  in  Wet  Weather."  He  had  much  to 
say  of  its  dampness  and  chills  and  fogs:  "Strange 
it  is  to  observe  the  approach  of  one  of  these  eerie 
fogs  on  some  fair  night.  The  blue  deeps  above 
glow  tenderly  beyond  the  sharp  crescent  of  the 
moon;  the  heavens  seem  transformed  to  an  in 
finite  ocean  of  liquid  turquoise,  made  living  with 
the  palpitating  life  of  the  throbbing  stars.  In  this 
limpid  clearness,  this  yellow,  tropical  moonlight, 
objects  are  plainly  visible  at  a  distance  of  miles ;  far 
sounds  come  to  the  ear  with  marvellous  distinct 
ness, — the  clarion  calls  of  the  boats,  the  long,  loud 
panting  of  the  cotton-presses,  exhaling  steaming 
breath  from  their  tireless  lungs  of  steel. 

"  Suddenly  sounds  become  fainter  and  fainter, 


178   Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

as  though  theatmosphere  were  madefeeble  byun- 
accountable  enchantment ;  distant  objects  lose  dis 
tinctness;  the  heaven  is  cloudless,  but  her  lights, 
low-burning  and  dim,  no  longer  make  the  night 
transparent,  and  a  chill  falls  upon  the  city,  such 
as  augurs  the  coming  of  a  ghost.  Then  the  ghost 
appears;  the  invisible  makes  itself  visible;  a  vast 
form  of  thin  white  mist  seems  to  clasp  the  whole 
night  in  its  deathly  embrace;  the  face  of  the  moon 
is  hidden  as  with  a  grey  veil,  and  the  spectral  fog 
extinguishes  with  its  chill  breath  the  trembling 
flames  of  the  stars." 

Turning  his  thought  to  grave  matters,  he  re 
fers  to  the  elevated  tombs  in  the  cemeteries,  which 
some  irreverently  call  "bake  ovens. "Then  comes 
a  touch  of  the  playful,  familiar  enough  to  those 
who  read  the  present  volume,  but  rarein  his  other 
books :  "  Fancy  being  asked  by  a  sexton  whether 
you  wished  to  have  the  remains  of  your  wife  or 
child  deposited  in  cone  of  them  bake  ovens/' 

Again,  with  a  swift  turn  of  thought  and  sub 
ject,  as  if  in  conversation  with  a  friend  or  as  if  in 
a  letter  to  him,  he  reverts  to  "  Beast  Ben  Butler" 
and  his  needless  brutality  in  having  carved  on  one 
of  the  New  Orleans  statues,  Clay's  declaration 
against  slavery  and  Andrew  Jackson's  famous 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    179 

say  ing,"  Our  federal  Union :  it  must  be  preserved." 
The  sight  of  Levantine  sailors  selling  fruit  in  the 
markets  caused  him  to  rhapsodize  on  the  sea, 
giving  the  first  of  those  prose  poems  in  which  he 
was  to  wax  almost  lyrical  in  so  many  of  his  works: 
"If  you,  O  reader,  chance  to  be  a  child  of  the 
sea;  if,  in  earliest  childhood,  you  listened  each 
morning  and  evening  to  that  most  ancient  and 
mystic  hymn-chant  of  the  waves,  which  none  can 
hear  without  awe,  and  which  no  musician  can 
learn;  if  you  have  ever  watched  wonderingly  the 
far  sails  of  the  fishing  vessels  turn  rosy  in  the 
blush  of  the  sunset,  or  silver  under  the  moon,  or 
golden  in  theglow  of  sunrise;  if  you  once  breathed 
as  your  native  air  the  divine  breath  of  the  ocean, 
and  learned  the  swimmer's  art  from  the  hoary 
breakers,  and  received  the  Ocean  god's  christen 
ing,  the  glorious  baptism  of  salt,  —  then  per 
haps  you  know  only  too  well  why  those  sailors 
of  the  Levant  cannot  seek  homes  within  the 
heart  of  the  land.  Twenty  years  may  have  passed 
since  your  ears  last  caught  the  thunder  of  that 
mighty  ode  of  hexameters  which  the  sea  has  al 
ways  sung  and  will  sing  forever,  —  since  your 
eyes  sought  the  far  line  where  the  vaulted  blue 
of  heaven  touches  the  level  immensity  of  rolling 


i8o    Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

waters,  —  since  you  breathed  the  breath  of  the 
ocean,  and  felt  its  clear  ozone  living  in  your  veins 
like  an  elixir.  Have  you  forgotten  the  mighty 
measure  of  that  mighty  song?  Have  you  forgot 
ten  the  divine  saltiness  of  that  unfettered  wind  ?  I  s 
not  the  spell  of  the  sea  strong  upon  you  still? . . . 

"And  I  think  that  the  Levantine  sailors  dare 
not  dwell  in  the  midst  of  the  land,  for  fear  lest 
dreams  of  a  shadowy  sea  might  come  upon  them 
in  the  night,  and  phantom  winds  call  wildly  to 
them  in  their  sleep,  and  they  might  wake  to  find 
themselves  a  thousand  miles  beyond  the  voice 
of  the  breakers." 

On  December  27,  1877,  already  deeply  inter 
ested  in  the  niceties  of  language,  Hearn  gave  his 
Cincinnati  readers  a  dissertation  upon  the  curi 
osities  of  Creole  grammar,  and  quoted  in  Creole 
a  weird  love-song,  said  to  be  of  negro  origin.  He 
doubted  whether  it  was  really  composed  by  a  ne 
gro,  but  remarked  that  its  spirit  was  undoubtedly 
African.  Then  he  gave  the  following  prose  ver 
sion  of  this  exotic: 

"Since  first  I  beheld  you,  Adele^ 
While  dancing  the  cahnda^ 
I  have  remained  faithful  to  the  thought  of  you; 
My  freedom  has  departed  from  me^ 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    181 

I  care  no  longer  for  all  other  negr esses; 
I  have  no  heart  left  for  them;  — 
Tou  have  such  grace  and  cunning :  — 
You  are  like  the  Congo  serpent. 

"/  love  you  too  much,  my  beautiful  one:  — 
/  am  not  able  to  help  it. 

My  heart  has  become  just  like  a  grasshopper, — 
It  does  nothing  but  leap. 
I  have  never  met  any  woman 
Who  has  so  beautiful  a  form  as  yours. 
Your  eyes  flash  flame ; 
Your  body  has  enchained  me  captive. 

"Ah,  you  are  so  like  the  serpent-of-the-rattles 
Who  knows  how  to  charm  the  little  bird, 
And  who  has  a  mouth  ever  ready  for  it 
To  serve  it  for  a  tomb. 
I  have  never  known  any  negress 
Who  could  walk  with  such  grace  as  you  can, 
Or  who  could  make  such  beautiful  gestures; 
Your  body  is  a  beautiful  doll. 

"When  I  cannot  see  you,  Adele, 
I  feel  myself  ready  to  die; 
My  life  becomes  like  a  candle 
Which  has  almost  burned  itself  out. 
I  cannot  then  find  anything  in  the  world 
Which  is  able  to  give  me  pleasure :  — 


1 82    Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

/  could  well  go  down  to  the  river 

And  throw  myself  in  it  that  I  might  cease  to  suffer. 

"  Tell  me  if  you  have  a  many 
And  I  will  make  an  ouanga  charm  for  him: 
I  will  make  him  turn  into  a  phantom^ 
If  you  will  only  take  me  for  your  husband. 
I  will  not  go  to  see  you  when  you  are  cross ; 
Other  women  are  mere  trash  to  me; 
I  will  make  you  very  happy 
And  I  will  give  you  a  beautiful  Madras  handkerchief" 

He  freely  admitted  that  the  poem  was  untrans 
latable,  that  it  lost  its  weird  beauty,  its  melody, 
itsliquidsoftness,  its  languor,  when  put  into  Eng 
lish.  Then  came  a  characteristic  bit  in  which  he 
displayed  the  man  who  dwelt  with  delight  upon 
the  inner  meaning  of  words,  —  the  delight  felt 
only  by  the  artist  in  language:  "I  think  there  is 
some  true  poetry  in  these  allusions  to  the  snake. 
Is  not  the  serpent  a  symbol  of  grace?  Is  not  the 
so-called 'line  of  beauty*  serpentine?  And  is  there 
not  something  of  the  serpent  in  the  beauty  of  all 
graceful  women  ?somethingof  undulating  shape 
liness,  something  of  silent  fascination  ?  something 
of  Lilith  and  Lamia?  The  French  have  a  beau 
tiful  verb  expressive  of  this  idea, — serpenter, '  to 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    183 

serpent/  to  curve  in  changing  undulations  like 
a  lithe  snake.  The  French  artist  speaks  of  the 
outlines  of  a  beautiful  human  body  as  'serpent- 
ing/  curving  and  winding  like  a  serpent.  Do  you 
not  like  the  word?  I  think  it  is  so  expressive  of 
flowinglines  of  elegance, — so  fullofthat  mystery 
of  grace  which  puzzled  Solomon:  cthe  way  of  a 
serpent  upon  a  rock." 

On  January  7,  1 878,  came  a  picture  in  prose, 
which  now  reminds  us  of  William  Ernest  Hen 
ley's  "London  Voluntary,"  in  which  the  latter 
described  the  splendor  of  a  golden  October  day 
in  the  metropolis  of  the  world.  Here  is  Christmas 
EveinNewOrleans:  "Christmas  Eve  camein  with 
a  blaze  of  orange  glory  in  the  west,  and  masses  of 
lemon-colored  clouds  piled  up  above  the  sunset. 
The  whole  city  was  filled  with  orange-colored  light, 
just  before  the  sun  went  down;  and  between  the 
lemon-hued  clouds  and  the  blue  were  faint  tints 
of  green.  The  colors  of  that  sunset  seemed  a  fairy 
mockery  of  the  colors  of  the  fruit  booths  through 
out  the  city;  where  the  golden  fruit  lay  piled  up  in 
luxuriant  heaps,  and  where  the  awnings  of  white 
canvas  had  been  replaced  by  long  archways  of 
interwoven  orange  branches  with  the  fruit  still 
glowinguponthem.lt  was  an  Orange  Christmas," 


1 84   Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

Then  at  nightfall  he  passed  the  French  opera 
house  on  Bourbon  Street.  It  was  "dark  and  dead 
and  silent,"  and  as  a  matter  of  course  the  dreamer 
had  another  vision:  "Sometimes,  when  passing 
under  the  sharply  cut  shadows  of  the  building 
in  a  night  of  tropical  moonlight,  I  fancy  that 
a  shadowy  performance  of  cDon  Giovanni'  or 
'Masaniello'  must  be  going  on  within  for  the  en 
tertainment  of  a  ghostly  audience;  and  that  if 
somebody  would  but  open  the  doors  an  instant, 
one  might  catch  a  glimpse  of  spectral  splendor, 
of  dusky-eyed  beauties  long  dead, — of  forgot 
ten  faces  pale  with  the  sleep  of  battlefields, — of 
silks  that  should  be  mouldering  in  mouldering 
chests  with  the  fashions  of  twenty  years  ago." 

And  finally  this  letter  contained  the  following 
prophetic  utterance  concerning  the  new  South, — 
the  South  then  not  yet  in  existence,  the  South 
that  so  nearly  approximates  what  Hearn  said  it 
would  be:"Itisthe  picturesqueness  of  theSouth, 
the  poetry,  the  traditions,  the  legends,  the  su 
perstitions,  the  quaint  faiths,  the  family  prides, 
the  luxuriousness,  the  splendid  indolence  and 
the  splendid  sins  of  the  old  social  system  which 
have  passed,  or  which  are  now  passing,  away  for 
ever The  new  South  may,  perhaps,  become 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    185 

far  richer  than  the  old  South;  but  there  will  be 
no  aristocracy,  no  lives  of  unbridled  luxury,  no 
reckless  splendors  of  hospitality,  no  mad  pursuit 
of  costliest  pleasures.  The  old  hospitality  has 
been  starved  to  death,  and  leaves  no  trace  of  its 
former  being  save  the  thin  ghost  of  a  romance. 
The  new  South  will  be  less  magnificent,  though 
wealthier;  less  generous,  though  more  self-deny 
ing;  less  poetical,  though  more  cultured.  The 
new  cities  will  be, probably, more  prosperous  and 
less  picturesque  than  the  old." 

January  14, 1878, Hearn  devoted  his  entire  let 
ter  to  W.  C.  C.Claiborne,  the  first  American  gov 
ernor  of  Louisiana.  H  e  told  in  what  hostile  manner 
the  American  was  received  by  the  haughty  Creole 
gentry,  and  how  he  was  alleged  to  have  worn  his 
hat  at  the  theatre.  It  is  in  the  comment  on  this 
that  Hearn  most  amusingly  displays  himselfas  an 
Englishman,  with  the  dim-seeing  eyes  of  a  Dick 
ens  or  a  saucy  Kipling  rather  than  the  clear-head 
ed,  clear-eyed  American,  or  the  adopted  citizen, 
understanding  this  country  and  its  people:  "I 
fancy  that  wearing  of  the  hat  before  those  terribly 
cultivated  and  excruciatingly  courteous  Creole  au 
diences  must  have  been  at  first  a  mere  oversight; 
but  that  poor  Claiborne  naturally  got  stubborn 


1 86   Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

when  such  an  outcry  was  raised  about  it  and, 
with  an  angry  pride  of  manhood  peculiar  to  good 
American  blood,  swore  c by  the  Eternal'  that  he 
would  wear  his  hat  wherever  he  pleased.  Don't 
you  almost  wish  you  could  slap  him  on  the  shoul 
der  with  that  truly  American  slap  of  approba 
tion?  "Of  course  that  is  pure  Dickens,  the  Dick 
ens  of  "American  Notes,"  just  as  is  the  follow 
ing  rather  amusingdescription  of  American  news 
papers  in  the  good  years  1804,  1805,  and  1806: 
"  In  those  days  the  newspaper  seems  to  have  been 
neither  more  nor  less  than  a  public  spittoon, — 
every  man  flung  his  quid  of  private  opinion  into 


it." 


Hearn  went  to  look  at  the  Claiborne  graves 
in  the  old  St.  Louis  cemetery  on  Basin  Street. 
Throughout  his  life  graveyards  seemed  to  have 
a  fascination  for  him;  but  the  following  descrip 
tion  of  the  St.  Louis  cemetery  is  interesting  be 
cause  it  proves,  what  has  often  been  denied,  that 
part  of  Hearn's  boyhood  was  spent  in  Wales: 
"This  cemetery  is  one  of  the  most  curious,  and  at 
the  same  time  one  of  the  most  dilapidated,  in  the 
world.  I  have  seen  old  graveyards  in  the  north 
of  England,  and  tombs  in  Wales,  where  names 
of  the  dead  of  three  hundred  years  ago  may  yet 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    187 

be  read  upon  the  mossy  stones;  but  I  have  never 
seen  so  grim  a  necropolis  as  the  ruined  Creole 
cemetery  at  New  Orleans.  There  is  no  order 
there,  no  regularity,  no  long  piles  of  white  obe 
lisks,  no  even  ranks  of  grey  tablets.  The  tombs 
seem  to  jostle  one  another;  the  graveyard  is  a 
labyrinth  in  which  one  may  easily  lose  oneself. 
Some  of  the  tombs  are  Roman  in  size  and  design; 
some  are  mere  heaps  of  broken  brick;  some  are 
of  the  old-fashioned  table  form." 

Readers  of  Hearn's  books  are  familiar  with 
those  pages  in  which  he  speaks  of  Japanese  fe 
male  names,  and  studies  appellations  in  general. 
This  fancy  was  no  new  thing  with  him.  As  long 
ago  as  February  1 8,  1 878,  he  studied  the  curious 
nomenclature  of  New  Orleans  streets,  revealing, 
as  it  does,  part  of  the  history  of  the  city,  some 
thing  of  its  old  gallant  life,  something  of  its  old 
classical  culture.  He  told  how  Burgundy  Street 
was  named  after  the  great  duke;  Dauphine  is,  of 
course,  self-explanatory,  as  are  Louis  XV  and 
Royal  and  Bourbon.  Governors  are  represented 
by  Carondelet,  Galvez,  and  others;  French  and 
Spanish  piety,  by  such  names  as  St.  Bartholomy, 
St.  Charles,  and  Annunciata.  The  classicism, 
which  so  affected  the  traditions  of  French  poetry 


1 88    Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

and  the  French  stage,  is  here  represented  by 
streets  named  Calliope,  Clio,  Dry  ades,  &c.  Gallan 
try,  "  often  wicked  gallantry,  I  fear,"  is  commemo 
rated  by  a  number  of  streets  christened  with  "the 
sweetest  and  prettiest  feminine  names  imagin 
able, — Adele,  Celeste,  Suzette,  and  Annette." 

Then  he  gave  his  readers  some  more  of  those 
Creole  songs  he  was  always  collecting,  some  of 
which  as  rich  treasure  he  was  afterwards  to  give 
to  his  friend,  Mr.  H.  E.  Krehbiel,  the  musical 
critic.  In  this  letter  he  told  how,  when  for  the  first 
time  he  read  Daudet's  novel,  translated  under  the 
title  of  "Sidonie,"he  was  charmed  with  the  re 
frain  of  a  Creole  song,  and  determined,  when  in 
New  Orleans,  to  procure  the  whole  poem.  He 
recorded  his  disappointment  in  being  able  only 
to  get  one  stanza,  which  he  translated  as  follows : 

"  Others  say  it  is  your  happiness; 
I  say,  it  is  your  sorrow : 
When  we  are  enchanted  by  love, 
Farewell  to  all  happiness! 
Poor  little  Miss  Zizif 
Poor  little  Miss  Zizif 
Poor  little  Miss  Zizif 
She  has  sorrow,  sorrow,  sorrow;  — 
She  has  sorrow  in  her  heart!" 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter   189 

Here  is  another  bit,  which  seems  to  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  very  uncouth  and  unpoetical  when  given 
in  bare,  bald  English,  robbed  of  the  oft-lisping 
Creole  melody  : 

"Iftkou  wert  a  little  bird, 
And  I  were  a  little  gun, 
I  would  shoot  thee  —  bang! 
Ah,  dear  little 
Mahogany  jewel, 
I  love  thee  as  a  little  pig  loves  the  mud.''' 

The  next  is  more  charming.  It  is  only  a  snatch, 
but  it  hints'delicious  romance: 

"Delaide,my  queen,  the  way  is  too  long  for  me  to  travel;  _ 
That  way  leads  far  up  yonder. 

But,  little  as  I  am,  I  am  going  to  stem  the  stream  up  there. 
c  I,  Liron,  am  come,'  is  what  I  shall  say  to  them. 

queen,  good  night;  'tis  I,  Liron,  who  have  come.'" 


And  finally  there  is  this  one,  evidently  of  negro 
origin,  made  to  ridicule  a  mulatto  girl  named 
Toucouton,  who  tried  to  pass  as  white: 

"Ah,  Toucouton! 
I  know  you  well: 
Tou  are  like  a  blackamoor; 
There  is  no  soap 
Which  is  white  enough 
To  wash  your  skin. 


190   Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

"When  the  white  folks  give  a  ball, 
You  are  not  able  to  go  there; 
Ah,  how  will  you  be  able  to  play  the  flirt! 
Tou  who  so  love  to  shine? 
Ah,  Toucouton,  &c. 

"  Once  you  used  to  take  a  seat 
Among  the  fashionable  people ; 
Now  you  must  take  leave,  decamp, 
Without  any  delay  whatever. 
Ah,  Toucouton,"  &c. 

We  have  seen  that  all  these  letters  by  Hearn 
were  as  if  written  for  his  own  pleasure  or  for  the 
pleasure  of  a  friend,  but  decidedly  not  for  a  news 
paper  clientele.  After  the  "  news  "  just  referred  to, 
there  followed  two  letters  which  would  seem  to 
indicate  that  the  patient  editor  besought  his  cor 
respondent  to  come  nearer  to  hard,  prosaic  news 
matters  and  treat  of  the  turmoil  of  Louisiana 
state  affairs.  Accordingly,  on  March  24,  1878, 
there  was  a  screed  on  "  Louisiana  as  It  Is,"  treat 
ing  of  the  political  questions,  and  finally  another, 
on  March  31,  scouting  the  possibility  of  forming 
a  Hayes  party  in  Louisiana.  These  letters  were 
written  in  so  half-hearted  a  way  that  it  was  not 
at  all  surprising  to  see  the  next  letter  from  New 
Orleans  signed  by  a  new  and  more  ordinary  name. 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter     191 

Hearn  was  no  longer  the  representative  of  the 
paper.  He  went  on  record  to  the  effect  that  he 
quit  because  the  paper  was  slow  about  pay  ing  him 
money,  although  he  demanded  the  arrears  time 
and  time  again.  The  chances  are  that  the  Com 
mercial9  s  readers  stupidly  wanted  more  about 
politics  and  less  about  Creole  love  poetry.  With 
the  close  of  this  correspondence  Hearn  thus  de 
finitely  closed  all  connection  with  the  Cincinnati 
newspaper  world. 

We  have  seen  now,  from  the  Midwinter  let 
ters,  how  the  Hearn  of  New  Orleans  was  the 
father  of  the  Hearn  of  the  West  Indies  and  of 
Japan.  Indeed,  so  far  as  his  work  was  concerned, 
the  same  subjects  interested  him  throughout  his 
life.  This  is  not  to  say  that  he  remained  at  a 
standstill.  On  the  contrary,  he  was  constantly 
growing.  Despite  his  bad  eyesight,  he  read  inces 
santly,  and  his  reading  took  a  very  wide  range. 
He  labored  to  perfect  his  style.  He  struggled 
with  words;  he  used  the  file  after  a  fashion  to 
remind  one  of  what  Flaubert  and  Stevenson 
have  told  us  of  themselves.  But  with  a  very  wise 
knowledge  of  his  own  sympathies  and  limita 
tions,  he  chose  exactly  the  topics  for  his  pen  that 


192    Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

could  most  surely  stir  his  imagination.  It  is  a 
little  singular,  some  seven  years  after  his  letters 
to  the  Cincinnati  newspaper,  to  find  him  writing 
practically  the  same  kind  of  articles  and  on  the 
same  subjects  for  Harper's  Weekly.  Hearn,  then 
at  the  age  of  thirty-five,  anxious  to  have  his 
things  appear  in  some  publication  with  a  circu 
lation  other  than  purely  local,  and  anxious  like 
wise  to  eke  out  his  slender  income,  managed  to 
secure  a  commission  from  the  house  of  Harper. 
The  firm  had  sent  a  staff  artist  to  New  Orleans  to 
draw  sketches  of  the  exposition  of  1885.  Hearn 
was  to  supply  the  descriptive  articles.  His  first 
appeared  in  Harper's  Weekly  of  January  3,  1885, 
and  was  a  straightforward  account  of  the  expo 
sition.  Of  course  with  a  man  of  Hearn's  tempera 
ment  this  could  not  last  long,  so  it  is  not  surpris 
ing  to  see  the  next  letter,  which  appeared  on 
January  10,  1885,  devoted  to  "The  Creole  Pa 


tois/' 


"Although,"  he  writes,  "the  pure  Creole  ele 
ment  is  disappearing  from  the f  Vie  Faubon,'  as 
Creole  children  call  the  antiquated  part  of  New 
Orleans,  it  is  there,  nevertheless,  that  the  patois 
survives  as  a  current  idiom ;  it  is  there  one  must 
dwell  to  hear  it  spoken  in  its  purity  and  to  study 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    193 

its  peculiarities  of  intonation  and  construction. 
Thepatois-speakinginhabitants,  dwelling  mostly 
in  those  portions  of  the  quadrilateral  furthest  from 
the  river  and  from  the  broad  American  bound 
ary  of  Canal  Street, — which  many  of  them  never 
cross  when  they  can  help  it, —  are  not  less  bizarre 
than  the  architectural  background  of  their  pic 
turesque  existence.  The  visitor  is  surrounded  by 
a  life  motley-colored  as  those  fantastic  popula 
tions  described  in  the  Story  of  the  Young  King 
of  the  Black  Isles;  the  African  ebon  is  least 
visible,  but  of  bronze  browns,  banana  yellows, 
orange  golds,  there  are  endless  varieties,  paling 
off  into  faint  lemon  tints  and  even  dead  silver 
whites.  The  paler  the  shade,  the  more  strongly 
do  Latin  characteristics  show  themselves; and  the 
oval  faces,  with  slender  cheeks  and  low,  broad 
brows,  prevail.  Sometimes  in  the  yellower  types  a 
curious  Sphinx  visage  appears,  dreamy  as  Egypt. 
Occasionally  also  one  may  encounter  figures  so 
lithe,  so  animal,  as  to  recall  the  savage  grace  of 
Piou's  'Satyress.'  For  the  true  colorist  the  con 
trast  of  a  light  saffron  skin  with  dead  black  hair 
and  eyes  of  liquid  jet  has  a  novel  charm,  as  of 
those  descriptions  in  the  Malay  poem,  c  Bida- 
sari,'  of c  women  like  statues  of  gold/  It  is  hard 


194    Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

to  persuade  oneself  that  such  types  do  not  be 
long  to  one  distinct  race,  the  remnant  of  some 
ancient  island  tribe,  and  the  sound  of  their  richly 
vowelled  Creole  speech  might  prolong  the  plea 
sant  illusion." 

Happening  to  mention  an  octoroon,  the  very 
term  starts  him  on  a  rhapsody: 

"That  word  reminds  one  of  a  celebrated  and 
vanished  type, —  never  mirrored  upon  canvas,  yet 
not  less  physically  worthy  of  artistic  preservation 
than  those  amber-tinted  beauties  glorified  in  the 
Oriental  studies  of  I  ngres,  of  Richter,  of  Gerome ! 
Uncommonly  tall  were  those  famous  beauties, 
citrine-hued,  elegant  of  stature  as  palmettoes, 
lithe  as  serpents;  never  again  will  such  types  re 
appear  upon  American  soil.  Daughters  of  luxury, 
artificial  human  growths,  never  organized  to  enter 
the  iron  struggle  for  life  unassisted  and  unpro 
tected,  they  vanished  forever  with  the  social  sys 
tem  which  made  them  a  place  apart  as  for  splendid 
plants  reared  within  a  conservatory.  With  the  fall 
of  American  feudalism  the  dainty  glass  house  was 
dashed  to  pieces;  the  species  it  contained  have 
perished  utterly ;  and  whatever  morality  may  have 
gained,  one  cannot  help  thinking  that  art  has 
lost  something  by  their  extinction.  What  figures 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    195 

for  designs  in  bronze!  What  tints  for  canvas!" 
Then  Hearn  returns  to  the  subject  of  the  Cre 
oles,  and  speaks  of  the  compilation  of  Creole 
proverbs  of  the  Antilles  and  other  places,  but  of 
the  lack  of  a  similar  work  in  Louisiana.  It  fore 
shadowed  his  own  "Ghombo  Zhebes,"  then  in 
the  making.  Reading  his  description  of  the  fu 
gitive  Creole  literature,  one  regrets  that  Hearn 
did  not  find  time  and  opportunity  to  collect  it 
as  he  did  the  proverbs. 

"TheineditedCreoleliterature,"sayshe,"com- 
prised  songs,  satires  in  rhyme,  proverbs,  fairy 
tales,  —  almost  everything  commonly  included 
under  the  term  of  folk-lore.  The  lyrical  portion  of 
it  is  opulent  in  oddities,  in  melancholy  beauties; 
Alphonse  Daudet  has  frequently  borrowed  there 
from,  using  Creole  refrains  in  his  novels  with 
admirable  effect.  Some  of  the  popular  songs  pos 
sess  a  unique  and  almost  weird  pathos;  there  is 
a  strange,  nai've  sorrow  in  their  burdens,  as  of 
children  sobbing  for  lonesomeness  in  the  night. 
Others,  on  the  contrary,  are  inimitably  comical. 
There  are  many  ditties  or  ballads  devoted  to  epi 
sodes  of  old  plantation  life,  to  surreptitious  frolic, 
to  description  of  singular  industries  and  callings, 
to  commemoration  of  events  which  had  strongly 


196    Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

impressed  the  vivid  imagination  of  negroes, — a 
circus  show,  an  unexpected  holiday,  the  visit  of 
a  beautiful  stranger  to  the  planter's  home,  or  even 
some  one  of  those  incidents  indelibly  marked 
with  a  crimson  spatter  upon  the  fierce  history  of 
Louisiana  politics." 

On  January  17, under  the  same  caption,  Hearn 
continued  the  subject,  giving  some  of  the  songs 
and  speaking  of  their  probable  African  ancestry. 

On  January  31,  once  more  under  the  general 
title  of  "The  New  Orleans  Exposition/'  Hearn 
turns  with  avidity  to  musings  on  the  Japanese 
exhibit.  Right  in  the  beginning  we  have  this  on 
art,  remarkable, as  so  much  of  Hearn's  work  was, 
for  a  vivid  sense  of  color  and  form  despite  'his 
own  difficulty  in  seeing:  "What  Japanese  art  of 
the  best  era  is  unrivalled  in — that  characteristic 
in  which,  according  even  to  the  confession  of  the 
best  French  art  connoisseurs,  it  excels  all  other 
art — is  movement, the  rhythm,  thepoetry  of  visi- 
blemotion.  Great  mastersof  the  antique  Japanese 
schools  have  been  known  to  devote  a  whole  life 
time  to  the  depiction  of  one  kind  of  bird,  one 
variety  of  insect  or  reptile,  alone.  This  speciali 
zation  of  art,  as  Ary  Renan  admirably  showed  us 
in  a  recent  essay,  produced  results  that  no  Euro- 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    197 

pean  master  has  ever  been  able  to  approach.  A 
flight  of  gulls  sweeping  through  the  gold  light 
of  a  summer  morning;  a  long  line  of  cranes  sail 
ing  against  a  vermilion  sky;  a  swallow  twirling 
its  kite  shape  against  the  disk  of  the  sun;  the 
heavy,  eccentric,  velvety  flight  of  bats  under  the 
moon;  the  fairy  hoverings  of  moths  or  splen 
did  butterflies, — these  are  subjects  the  Japanese 
brush  has  rendered  with  a  sublimity  of  realism 
which  might  be  imitated,  perhaps,  but  never  sur 
passed.  Except  in  the  statues  of  gods  or  goddesses 
(Buddhas  which  almost  compel  the  Christian  to 
share  the  religious  awe  of  their  worshippers,  or 
those  charming  virgins  of  the  Japanese  heaven, 
'slenderly  supple  as  a  beautiful  lily'),  the  Japa 
nese  have  been  far  from  successful  in  delineation 
of  the  human  figure.  But  their  sculpture  or  paint 
ing  of  animal  forms  amazes  by  its  grace;  their 
bronze  tortoises,  crabs,  storks,  frogs,  are  not  mere 
copies  of  nature:  they  are  exquisite  idealizations 
of  it." 

Almost  every  paragraph  seems  to  foreshadow 
some  chapter  in  some  one  of  Hearn's  future 
books  on  Japan.  With  a  memory  of  his  papers 
on  Japanese  insects,  this,  written  in  1885,  is  sig 
nificant: 


198    Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 

"Perhaps  it  is  bad  taste  on  the  writer's  part, 
but  the  bugs  and  reptiles  in  cotton  attracted  his 
attention  even  more  than  the  cranes.  You  see  a 
Japanese  tray  covered  with  what  appear  to  be 
dead  and  living  bugs  and  beetles, — some  appar 
ently  about  to  fly  away;  others  with  upturned 
abdomen,  legs  shrunk  up,  antennae  inert.  They 
are  so  life-like  that  you  may  actually  weigh  one 
in  your  hand  a  moment  before  you  find  that  it 
is  made  of  cotton.  Everything,  even  to  the  joints 
of  legs  or  abdomen,  is  exquisitely  imitated:  the 
metallic  lustre  of  the  beetle's  armor  is  reproduced 
by  a  bronze  varnish.  There  are  cotton  crickets 
with  the  lustre  of  lacquer,  and  cotton  grasshop 
pers  of  many  colors:  the  korogi,  whose  singing 
is  like  to  the  sound  of  a  weaver,  weaving  rapidly 
(cko-ro-ru,  ko-ro-ru'),  and  the  kirigisi,  whose 
name  is  an  imitation  of  its  own  note." 

Or  again,  remembering  his  masterly  descrip 
tion  of  an  ascent  of  the  famous  Japanese  moun 
tain,  read  this,  written  long  before  he  had  ever 
seen  it  in  the  reality:  "Splendid  silks  were  hang 
ing  up  everywhere,  some  exquisitely  embroid 
ered  with  attractive  compositions,  figures,  land 
scapes,  and  especially  views  of  Fusiyama,  the 
matchless  mountain,  whose  crater  edges  are 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter    199 

shaped  like  the  eight  petals  of  the  Sacred  Lotos; 
Fusiyama,  of  which  the  great  artist  Houkousai 
alone  drew  one  hundred  different  views;  Fusi 
yama,  whose  snows  may  only  be  compared  for 
pearly  beauty  to  cthe  white  teeth  of  a  young  girl,' 
and  whose  summit  magically  changes  its  tints 
through  the  numberless  variations  of  light. 
Everywhere  it  appears, — the  wonderful  moun 
tain, —  on  fans,  behind  rains  of  gold,  or  athwart  a 
furnace  light  of  sunset,  or  against  an  immaculate 
blue,  or  gold  burnished  by  some  wizard  dawn; 
in  bronze,  exhaling  from  its  mimic  crater  a  pillar 
of  incense  smoke;  on  porcelain,  towering  above 
stretches  of  vineyard  and  city-speckled  plains,  or 
perchance  begirdled  by  a  rich  cloud  sash  of 
silky,  shifting  tints,  like  some  beauty  of  Yosi- 
wara." 

At  this  period  in  his  life  there  was  not  only  a 
love  of  Creole  folk-lore  and  a  longing  for  Japan, 
but  a  very  decided  and  deep  interest  in  things 
Chinese.  Not  only  was  Hearn  preparing  himself 
for  the  writing  of  "Some  Chinese  Ghosts,"  but 
it  is  altogether  probable  that  his  dreams  of  a 
trip  to  Asia  contemplated  a  sojourn  in  China  as 
well  as  in  Japan.  The  daintiness,  the  fairy-like 
beauty  of  the  Island  Empire  won  him,  and  China 


2OO 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter 


lost  its  chance  for  interpretation  by  a  master. 
However,  in  his  letter  of  March  7,  i  885,  telling 
of  "  The  East  at  New  Orleans,"  we  find  this  rela 
tive  to  China: 

"At  either  side  of  the  main  entrance  is  a  great 
vase,  carved  from  lips  to  base  with  complex  de 
signs  in  partial  relief  and  enamelled  in  divers 
colors.  In  general  effect  of  coloration  the  display 
is  strictly  Chinese;  the  dominating  tone  is  yel 
low, — bright  yellow,  the  sacred  and  cosmogonic 
color  according  to  Chinese  belief.  When  the  Mas 
ter  of  Heaven  deigns  to  write,  He  writes  with 
yellow  ink  only,  save  when  He  takes  the  light 
ning  for  His  brush  to  trace  a  white  sentence  of 
destruction.  So  at  least  we  are  told  in  the  book 
called  Kan-ing  p'ien, — the  'Book  of  Rewards 
and  Punishments/  which  further  describes  the 
writing  of  God  as  being  in  tchouen, — those  an 
tique  'seal-characters'  now  rarely  seen  except  in 
jewel  engraving,  signatures  stamped  on  works 
of  art,  or  inscriptions  upon  monuments, — those 
primitive  ideographic  characters  dating  back  per 
haps  to  that  age  of  which  we  have  no  historic 
record,  but  of  which  Chinese  architecture,  with 
its  strange  peaks  and  curves,  offers  us  more  than 
a  suggestion, — the  great  Nomad  Era." 


Letters  of  Ozias  Midwinter   201 

There  were  only  two  more  of  Hearn's  letters 
on  the  exposition,  one  on  March  14,  on  Mexico 
at  New  Orleans,  telling  of  the  wax  figures,  de 
picting  various  Mexican  types,  and  describing 
the  feather-work,  imitated  from  that  of  the  Az 
tecs;  the  other,  appearing  April  1 1,  1885,  telling 
of  the  government  exhibit.  On  November  7  he 
wound  up  his  letters  for  Harper's  by  telling  some 
thing  about  "The  Last  of  the  Voudoos," — Jean 
Montanet,or  Voudoo  John,  or  Bayou  John,  who 
had  just  died  in  New  Orleans. 

On  March  28  and  April  4  there  appeared  in 
Harper's  Bazar,  some  "  Notes  of  a  Curiosity 
Hunter,"  in  which  he  described  some  of  the 
things  that  interested  him  most  in  the  Japanese 
and  Mexican  exhibits. 

The  End 


